Jean+Piaget


 * Piaget, Jean** **(1896–1980)** A Swiss psychologist whose theories of child development and human intelligence shaped thinking on the subjects for decades. Based largely on studies of his own three children, Piaget argued that interaction with the environment was the main stimulus to cognitive development. He asserted that development was a process of constant //adaptation//, of finding new ways to balance the //assimilation// of new experience to existing patterns of action, and of //accommodation// or revision of those patterns in function of environmental demands. Maturation, for Piaget, involved reaching higher states of equilibrium between assimilation and accommodation. Piaget identified several major stages in this process—each associated with the development and internalization of different types of logical operation: (1) the //sensorimotor// intelligence characteristic of early infancy, in which the world is progressively differentiated into discrete objects and logical, externalized actions; (2) the long period of childhood, dominated by the passage from //preoperational// to //concrete operations//, by which Piaget meant the facility for translating knowledge and experience into logical categories; and (3) a //formal operational// stage, dominated by the achievement of abstract thought and logic that are independent from immediate experience.

By the 1950s, Piaget extended these theories toward a more general consideration of the developmental bases of human intelligence—a subject he called //genetic epistemology//. Piaget treated intelligence as primarily an adaptation to the environment at the biological level. This work challenged much of the prevailing research in cognitive and linguistic theory (such as the **Sapir–Whorf hypothesis**, a model of linguistic determinism), including Noam Chomsky 's assumptions about the “hard-wired” characteristics of the human intelligence. Piaget's major works include //The Language and Thought of the Child// (1923 [1926]), //The Origin of Intelligence in the Child// (1936 [1952]), //The Principles of Genetic Epistemology// (1970 [1972]), //Biology and Knowledge// (1967 [1971]), and //The Development of Thought// (1975 [1977]).

"Piaget, Jean" //Dictionary of the Social Sciences//. Craig Calhoun, ed. Oxford University Press 2002. //Oxford Reference Online//. Oxford University Press. 25 September 2007 