Having considered the theory of Z. Freud, let's move on to a concept that considers the intellectual development of a person in ontogenesis, that is, we turn to the genetic theory of the development of thinking by J. Piaget.
According to the views of J. Piaget, there are two principles for the development of the intellect. The first is the principle of adaptation: intelligence is a tool for adapting to the environment. There are two mechanisms for this adaptation:
1) Assimilation - new information is acquired in accordance with existing patterns.
2) Accommodation - changing existing schemes in connection with new information.
The second principle is the principle of organization. Intelligence becomes more complex with age, so there are levels, and the lowest of them is the schema (mental representation of an action).
J. Piaget also identifies two rules for the development of intelligence:
1) Within a stage, changes are linear and quantitative; between the stages of change are of a qualitative nature.
2) The passage of the stage is obligatory and invariable.
Within the framework of the genetic concept of the development of intelligence, it is assumed that a person must go through 4 stages of development. The first stage is sensorimotor, it lasts the first two years of a person's life. The following sub-stages are distinguished:
1) 0-1 month This is the stage of rigidly set innate reflexes, the innate schemes of a person are realized. The new information has not yet been assimilated.
2) 1-4 months The mechanism of assimilation operates, new schemes appear, the first schemes are coordinated: visual-motor, visual-auditory (turning the head in response to sound). The same sub-stage is characterized by primary circular reactions: the repetition of an action for the sake of action.
3) 4-8 months - the stage of the first experimentation: the child applies all the actions known to him to the object. Secondary circular reactions also arise - the repetition of an action for the sake of change (it was quiet - it became loud).
4) 8-12 months There is an ability to anticipate events. The child already understands that one event entails another.
5) 13-18 months At this age, the child is actively experimenting with the outside world and its objects. There are critical circular reactions - the repetition of an action for the sake of a result. There comes an understanding that one action can serve as a means to achieve another. It becomes clear to the child what action needs to be taken in order to achieve a result.
6) 18-24 months This is the time of the emergence of practical intelligence - the child no longer needs experiments to understand how the object works. With unfamiliar objects acts adequately.
The next stage covers the age from two to seven years - this is the preoperative stage. J. Piaget highlights the features of the thinking of a child of this age:
1) Egocentrism. The child considers himself the center of the world, the universe. Let's illustrate this feature with an example. Suppose the child's name is Kolya and he has a brother, Vanya. If you ask Kolya if he has a brother, he will say yes, he does. However, if you ask Kolya if Vanya also has a brother, the answer will be “no, Vanya does not have a brother.” Thus, the child does not know how to take the position of another at the age of 2-7 years.
2) Realism - the child judges the world in terms of his knowledge.
3) Animism (the desire to animate all objects) and anthropomorphism (the transfer of human relations to inanimate objects) - all the games of the child are built on these features.
4) Artificalism - the belief that everything in the world is created artificially.
J. Piaget also talks about the defects of children's thinking at the age of 2-7 years:
1) The phenomenon of transduction (transition from particular to particular). For example, the sun is yellow because it is round.
2) Lack of preservation physical quantities. If you pour water from one glass to another, then the child will judge the volume by the shape of the glass - where the water mark is higher, there is more water.
3) Misunderstanding of metaphors, proverbs, sayings.
4) Wrong ratio of content and volume. Suppose we have 5 roses and 3 carnations, and we ask the child which is more: roses or carnations. In this case, the child gives the correct answer: there are more roses than carnations. However, if you ask a child what is more: flowers or roses, then he will give the wrong answer, stating that there are more roses than flowers.
5) Misunderstanding of logical contradictions. Children at this age can draw waves moving against the wind, or trees leaning against the wind.
6) Inability to serriate (order). So, for example, a child cannot sort gray cards of various shades from light to dark.
7) Incapacity for transitivity.
The third stage is called the stage of concrete thinking, and it unfolds at the age of 7-11 years. At this stage, the mental operations of the child are concrete. He already knows how to add, but he cannot sum 1 + 1, but only 1 matryoshka with another matryoshka. That is, he knows how to perform operations with specific objects. Therefore, he bends his fingers when he counts.
The final stage is the stage of formal operations. At this stage, operations are abstract. Now he can add two abstract numbers 1 and 1, and also perform operations with operations: (1+3)*2. The child begins to put forward hypotheses and follow them.
Many parents are concerned about the age at which to give their child pocket money and when to trust valuables. I really want the child to show independence and responsibility. When an eight-year-old student loses money or breaks expensive phones, moms and dads get very upset.
After school, eight-year-old Andrei, together with his governess, returns home by bus. Parents bought a ticket, but the boy sometimes forgets it at home. Andrei has to pay with his own money, donated by his grandfather for his birthday. Andrei carries money with him everywhere, he likes to feel “with money”, to buy sweets and small toys for himself and the girls. Andrei does not like to pay for travel, but he does it. After all, you can’t argue with your father!
One day, a schoolboy forgot both his travel card and money at home. I had to borrow from the governess. All the way Andrey almost cried: “Please don’t take my money when we get home! Oh please!"
At first, the governess could not endure the suffering of the child and forgave the debt. When such behavior began to be repeated almost daily, she realized that she was making a pedagogical mistake by encouraging Andrey's irresponsibility, and stopped responding to tantrums.
The boy almost stopped forgetting his money and travel card at home. When this did happen, the child would throw a tantrum and, in crying, would reach a state of passion. He did not understand why he had to return the money to the governess.
It turns out that the child's thinking is absolutely not ready to save, analyze, preserve and draw conclusions based on analysis. All that a child can at this age is to lose money, become a victim of a robbery (older children will be taken away, and even intimidated so as not to tell their parents), buy things that no one needs, try to “buy” friends for themselves, feeding them with pies and sweets …
We, adults, have long forgotten how we thought in childhood. It seems to us that we were just less smart, knew less. How can you think differently?! As you can see, you can! To understand a child, you need to know how he thinks. This task is very difficult. The world famous Swiss scientist Jean Piaget was able to cope with it.
The scientist conducted a series of experiments with children from four years old and discovered the striking features of children's thinking.
The children were shown two rows of beads with the same number of beads, two identical vessels with the same amount of water, and two identical lumps of clay. The subjects were asked the question, is the number of beads in both rows the same, is the amount of water in the vessels the same, and is the amount of clay in the lumps the same? Everyone answered: "The same."
Then, before the eyes of a child in one of the rows, the beads were moved further apart; water from one container was poured into a narrower vessel, so that the water level became what it was originally; one of the lumps of clay was rolled into a long sausage. After all these manipulations, the subjects were again asked the same questions.
The answer of preschoolers from four to six years old was as follows: there are more beads in the first row than in the second; there is more water in a narrower vessel; there is more clay in the sausage. At the same time, any explanations that this is not so, any attempts to explain the correct answers did not give any results.
A child of seven to ten years old either gave different correct answers in different situations, or gave the correct answer, but could not explain it, or easily agreed if he was suggested the opposite answer.
And, finally, a child of eleven or thirteen years old always confidently gave the correct answer and could somehow substantiate his statement.
These phenomena in mental development any child were subsequently named Piagetian phenomena.
Piaget tried to find an explanation for them: maybe the child does not understand the questions he is asked? He insistently drew the children's attention to the fact that they were asked not about the distance between the beads, but about their number, and so on. But the children stood their ground and to the question “why is there more water?” They answered: "Because it was transfused."
It turns out conservation principle(quantity, volume, mass ...) a child can master at best by the age of eleven, because for this you need to perform operations with concepts. Moreover, the ability to compare quantities does not appear spontaneously, but requires special education, including learning logical rules.
This was proved by the scientists-teachers L. M. Fridman and L. I. Zemtsova. They conducted several experiments with five groups of subjects: older preschoolers (5 to 7 years old), younger students (7 to 9 years old), younger teenagers (10 to 12 years old), older students and adults.
The subject was shown ten different objects: a ruler, a string, a pencil, a ball, a cube, etc. We made sure that he knew each of them and could name the properties, then they asked: “Which of these objects is the largest and why?” and “Which of these items is the smallest and why?” All preschoolers, the vast majority junior schoolchildren and teenagers and more than half of high school students and adults immediately pointed to one object or group of the largest or smallest. Although the parameter by which it was necessary to compare these items was not specified.
In the last series of experiments, all subjects who tried to compare objects without a comparison parameter were found to have Piaget's phenomenon. That is, they did not possess or poorly possessed the principle of conservation!
Children and adults in whom Piaget's phenomenon is found compare objects not according to the attribute they are asked for, but according to the one that catches their eye. When they have two identical objects in front of them: two identical rows of beads, two identical vessels with the same amount of water and two identical lumps of clay, they just say: “The same”. And when one of the objects changes shape, the comparison takes place solely on the basis of the external, most obvious sign: the length of the beads, the height of the water level and the length of clay sausages.
An employee of the largest American specialist in the field of research on cognitive processes, Jerome Bruner I. Frank, found that if a child of four or five years old was asked whether the amount of water would change if it was poured from one vessel to another, for example, a wider one, then most of these children answered that the same amount of water will remain. But when this transfusion was performed before their eyes, they pointed to a vessel with a higher level of water, as containing more water.
The understanding of abstract laws, which include the law of conservation, occurs in the process of development and learning. Before five years, the level of development of thinking does not allow understanding such laws. And after five, development already corresponds to the required level, but without training this will never happen anyway, otherwise there would be no adults with the Piagetian phenomenon.
Through experiments, Jerome Bruner and his collaborators found that if children five or six years old were trained, three out of four children would understand the conservation principle.
The mere accumulation of knowledge does not automatically lead to the development of thinking. The child's thinking is formed in the learning process, when, under the guidance of older children, the child actively masters various practical skills and masters various ways of cognitive activity, ranging from observing nature and experimenting with pets, ending with the development of the world of books, cinema and, of course, the development of science at school .
This is evidenced by research by University of California psychologist Patricia Greenfield. She found that in the absence school education intellectual development stops shortly after the age of nine.
It is in our power to help the child master the laws of logic, become more independent and responsible. And if you, dear parents, want to check whether your child is developing in the right direction, then the Stanford-Binet and Wexler tests can help you.
The Stanford-Binet test allows you to determine the so-called mental age of a child, calculate the IQ based on general awareness, the level of development of speech, perception, memory, and the ability to think logically.
The Wechsler test has two various options: for children from four to six years old and from seven to sixteen. He evaluates word proficiency, the ability to detect similarities and differences between objects, memorize, count, and a number of other abilities.
Opportunity early development children is undeniable. And geeks are living proof of this. But let the peculiarities of children's logic for the time being not cause you concern.
Read other articles by Lyubov Mayskaya about the phenomena of children's thinking!
Jean William Fritz Piaget (August 9, 1896, Neuchâtel, Switzerland - September 16, 1980, Geneva, Switzerland) - Swiss psychologist and philosopher, known for his work on the study of the psychology of children
Intelligence is an innate characteristic, unchanged and inherited - this is one position. And this is where Jean Piaget comes in.
Jean Piaget was a gifted child because his first publication was when he was 12 years old. 12 summer child submits an article to Science Magazine and publish it. Resting on the seashore with his parents, he draws attention to the fact that some mollusks are in a very difficult situation: being in the high / low tide, some mollusks are either under water or on land. This is an interest in biology. This is his first interest and for life. He is a biologist by first education, but in his student years he became interested in psychology and immediately begins to study it. He must have been a gifted student, as the Binet-Theremin Science Center applied for him (in Western practice, this is common for gifted students).
That is, he is invited to the laboratory, where tests are created, standardized and developed. For that time - a surprisingly good offer. And this interests him and he begins to work. A year later, Piaget leaves of his own free will, he writes an article in a scientific journal in which he says that for a psychologist, the test method is an uninteresting toolkit, and if he is a psychologist, then he should be interested in something completely different. He had nothing of his own at that moment, but he categorically refused.
He decides that his professional destiny will never be connected with a normative approach. Why? He asks what the method of tests gives? This is a measuring tool. Piaget says: “I can only measure and understand that this child did not solve the problem. I'm not interested. I want to understand why he did not solve this problem. He did decide. He thought about it. How did he think he came to such a wrong decision? What is the logic behind his reasoning? Thus, Piaget says that he will devote his career to solving not a quantitative but a qualitative question.
There is no method. If we abandon the test method, what are we left with? It offers a method that is commensurate in use with the test method. This clinical conversation method . He asks the child a problem and listens to his answer. Any answer of the child makes it possible to ask clarifying questions: “Why, actually?”. To which the child again gives an answer. And we have the opportunity to ask him questions again. So, a lot of questions and answers allow us to build the general logic of the child's reasoning. Do we know first what questions we will ask the child? We don't know. Starting this conversation, the psychologist does not have any plan of questions. This method is called "unstructured conversation" , - I will look for the form in which to ask this, since I do not know what answers the child will give me. And the method of clinical conversation is, therefore, in that sense, an incredible skill.
With this method, Piaget begins to collect materials. He tries to describe the qualitative specifics of the child's thinking. And at that time he is interested in the child preschool age. 20 years of work ends with the fact that he finds such peculiar features of the child's thinking, which very convincingly leads everyone to the fact that the child is completely different, he has a completely different thinking and he talks about what it is. "Judgement and Reasoning of a Child" , - in this work he describes the qualitative originality of a preschool child.
As we can see, the first task is descriptive. We need to understand how the child thinks. He described, found characteristics, collected phenomenology and entered the golden fund of psychology.
The second question that naturally arises in him is how the transition from childish thinking to adult thinking takes place. In other words, that is the question of development mechanisms . And quickly enough he offers theoretical concept, which met with a huge amount of criticism. We are more interested in it as a historical fact.
And also by the fact that Vygotsky argues with this theoretical concept. We are interested to see the discussion of these two greatest minds and what is the culture of scientific discussion. Vygotsky does not just say that he does not accept the concept, he repeats Piaget's experiments. It slightly modifies the conditions and brings us to completely different conclusions. This is an empirical dispute. They saw each other once in their lives, shortly before Vygotsky's death. And before that, there is an interesting publication - correspondence, a correspondence discussion of people who argue about the mechanisms of thinking. Vygotsky also has "Thinking and Speech" - a great work on genetic psychology.
Vygotsky died early. Piaget was lucky enough to live a great life. He already has a big Research institute and a name in psychology, when all of a sudden, he publicly renounces his theory. He writes: “Yes, I was wrong!” He was over 40 and he could rest on his laurels, but he refuses and starts all over again. It's great that life gave him another big chunk of time and he did it. At 45, to say that he refuses and start over is certainly courage.
He manages to offer us another theoretical concept, which has become the pinnacle of scientific thought regarding the development of intelligence. We will study it. But in the work of Piaget, two periods are considered and they say so: "early Piaget" And "late Piaget" . They say this because we understand what concept we are arguing with. Sometimes they argue with the early Piaget, a concept that he himself abandoned. The first was the concept of the development of thinking, and in the second - the intellect appeared (if we are talking about the concept of the development of thinking - early Piaget, if we are talking about the concept of the development of the intellect - late Piaget). At the same time, the description of the phenomenology of the child's thinking, his first work, is by no means outdated.
And despite the fact that Piaget's concept continues to be criticized, we still have nothing in return. And at the moment - this is the brightest concept for the development of intelligence.
Thinking of a preschooler
We will start with the first concept, phenomenology. These are the features of the child's thinking and in this case we will talk about a preschooler.
Piaget in this sense is close to ours. domestic psychology, since both with us and with him - not a quantitative, but a qualitative approach.
Egocentrism
That is, "I" in the center. This is the unique position of a child who perceives the world in this way. The whole world around him and for him. He sees himself as the center of every situation.
We, adults, see that there is an objective situation and there are many positions of perception of the same situation: one person saw the situation in this way, another in another way, and when adults encounter this situation of inconsistency in perception, they understand that the other person can see the situation differently. Small child I am sure that since he sees the situation, absolutely everyone sees it. This is an absolute certainty that there can be no other position. And it is impossible to argue with a child.
Piaget was very skilled in diagnostic tests. His samples even got the name "Piagetian phenomena" . He asks some questions or creates situations in which all children react in the same way, one hundred percent reproducible. We are talking about the fact that the child will solve test problems in different ways, depending on which region he lives in. And Piaget managed to find such tasks that all children solve in the same way (in America, in China, in the 50s and now).
For example, in order to see the egocentric position of a child, he is seated at a table, on which there is a model of an area with a complex terrain, with three mountains of different heights (this is what is called “three mountains”). A whole group of children sits around the table and everyone is given the task of drawing the landscape that they see. This preparatory stage. And diagnostic, when the child is given a set of drawings of layout images from different positions and the child is asked to find the drawing that the child drew in front of him. Now, to his right. To his left. Which? With amazing consistency, he chooses what he saw. And although he saw that the terrain was not easy, he is absolutely convinced that everyone saw the same thing as he did. If suddenly the child says: “Can I look from the other side?” - the egocentric position is overcome. But a 6-year-old child is absolutely sure that everyone sees the world the way he does.
Piaget believes that the egocentric position is overcome at the age of seven. But he believes that the pace of development is individual. We all go through the same stages, but the speed is individual. And speaking of school readiness, this is much more consistent than testing.
While the child is in an egocentric position, it is very difficult for him to fit into any organized system of education at all. The egocentric position is overcome around the age of seven, but this does not mean that an adult cannot be an egocentrist. Piaget says that we can be egocentric when we start talking about things about which we know very little. And we say: “Why don’t they see something there!” In fact, Piaget warns us to first learn the whole situation, and then speak out so confidently.
In Geneva, there is the Piaget Institute, a very strong research center that he himself once educated, a very strong research center, in which Piaget's students work. They are already developing a very interesting idea of the mechanisms for overcoming egocentrism.
The concept of "socio-cognitive conflict" is a terribly useful thing for a child. We are talking about the fact that adults can have a completely different position. Adults try to argue, justifying their position - the cognitive conflict is resolved by cognitive means. The child does not have cognitive means and the cognitive conflict very soon develops into a social one - to fight and swear. And in adulthood, if a person resorts to this form, it means that he is not doing very well with argumentation and logic.
But it turns out that the more often a child finds himself in a situation of socio-cognitive conflict, the sooner his position is shaken (if someone is ready to fight for his other position, there may be something in it). And it turns out that it is useful for a child to communicate in a circle of peers, he needs them as people who will not give in, because an adult cannot argue with a child precisely because the child has a different logic. That is, an adult, due to his competence and a more mature position, will not fight with a child.
Realism of thinking
This is the reduction of the real plan to the boundaries of the visible. We are talking about limitations for a child: only what he saw with his own eyes is real for him. Only what he saw is real to him. What does he see? He sees only that which is a phenomenon. Speaking about the development of the knowledge of the child, he appeals to the knowledge of his world. Much more often it is said that the child learns the physical world and the laws of its structure. What does he see? He sees that it is snowing. This is the reality in which he exists. What does he not see? He does not see hidden mechanisms (why it snows).
Our children now count and read at preschool age. The child asks where the snow comes from and we honestly talk about the phenomena of the water cycle in nature. And he listens with such interest and seems to understand everything. But tomorrow we tell him that Metelitsa lives above, in the clouds, she shakes the feather bed and snow falls from it. And this is true for a child. And there is no difference between these two truths. Snow is a reality, and everything we talk about the mechanism is a fairy tale. Is there Santa Claus? Yes, - he puts gifts under the Christmas tree.
Example: The girl is afraid that someone is sitting behind the curtain. Saying it doesn't is pointless. We will not help the child in any way because he has it. Therefore, if we are dealing with a child of preschool age, how to work with them? We ask her about who is sitting there - she draws a character - a scary fairy with green eyes. We ask why she comes and scares - no need to say that she is not there. The child is a dreamer and says that it is necessary to sprinkle the curtain with living water and it will no longer come. And she again says where to get it and how to cook it.
Of course, if such fears appear, there are deeper reasons - there is some kind of anxiety. But the symptoms in a child at preschool age are removed very easily.
The second phenomenon - also very important - lies. The child deceives by looking with clear and honest eyes. It's even sadder when a parent asks if everything is okay in the head. The child is deceiving when he knows that it is very easy to check this. What's the point, why would he do that?
Artificalism
We have come to the conclusion that the child sees phenomena, but does not understand the mechanisms of their manifestation. For a child, an adult remains omnipotent. And for a child, an adult can be the culprit of ongoing and physical events, that all the phenomena of the physical world can also be the work of man.
Questions the child asks: “Why do they put a stone in each cherry?” - the child cannot even think that this is how nature intended.
Misunderstanding of causal relationships also leads to such hypotheses.
“Why is snow put on the roof, you can’t go sledding there?” That is, everything is according to the will of man.
Since the child suspects a person of omnipotence, he moves even further. And there is such a feature as the magic of children's thinking.
The magic of children's thinking
If natural conditions- the work of man, then maybe I can too?
Piaget describes his daughter secretly tearing off the leaves of a tear-off calendar. For what? Zoom in on the event.
What is the right child? He absolutely correctly connected the passage of time and the tearing off of the calendar. But the essence of this connection is not clear to him. How about in such a direct way? And the child is experimenting in this way.
illogicality
It becomes that connecting link in Piaget's work, between the first and second theoretical concepts.
The child's thinking is illogical. Piaget discovered the specific features of the child's thinking, but the difficulty was that he could not find a conceptual apparatus for very long. He searches in psychology and does not find it. But for comparative analysis this does not fit.
Piaget says that we start from the adult. Adults are logical. And this was said a long time ago before Piaget in formal logic. That is, he goes beyond the bounds of one formal discipline all the time.
There is a discipline of formal logic. Logic speaks about the features of the construction of reasoning. What does it mean to "think logically"?
- Highlight cause-and-effect relationships;
- Be consistent in statements;
- Deduction - the thought of an adult can be described as deduction - the movement from the particular to the particular through the general - we can connect two particulars only by finding something in common in them;
Insensitivity to contradictions
The child looks at a puddle in which autumn leaves float. Why do they swim, why don't they sink? “Because they are light,” says the child. And then the child is offered to look at the sea and ask: “Why doesn’t a big ship sink?” “But because it is heavy,” the child will answer.
Such arguments are all over the place. And it is impossible to catch a child on contradictions because he does not see anything impossible in this.
Development of thinking in ontogeny (Jean Piaget's theory)
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) studied the patterns of development of thinking in a child and came to the conclusion that cognitive development is the result of successive stages of personality development. The development of the child's intellect occurs in a constant search for a balance between what the child knows and seeks to understand. All children go through these stages in the same sequence, influenced by factors such as maturation. nervous system, accumulation of experience, development of speech and education. The cognitive development of a child can be blocked at a certain stage if one of the listed factors is underrepresented.
According to Piaget's theory, four main periods can be distinguished in the development of human intelligence: the sensorimotor stage (from birth to 2 years), the preoperative stage (from 2 to 7 years), the stage of concrete operations (from 7 to 11 years) and the stage of formal operations (from 11 to 15 years).
Sensorimotor intelligence - stage of development of the intellect (from birth to two years), which unfolds to a period of intensive language learning. At this stage, coordination of perception and motor skills is achieved, the child interacts with objects, their perceptual and motor signals, but not with the signs, symbols that represent the object.
Do-ops not thinking - the stage of development of the intellect of a child from two to seven years old, is characterized by the formation of a symbolic function, which ensures the distinction between the signified and the definition and is the basis for the development of ideas. At this stage of development, the child focuses only on perceptual relationships. Children's thinking at this stage is noted egocentrism.
Stage of specific operations - a form of thinking, carried out on the basis of logical operations that use external visual data. This stage of development is characteristic of children aged 7-8 to 11-12 years. At this stage, a conceptual reflection of the environment is formed, the child masters the simple operations of classification, the concepts of number, time, movement, and the like are formed. At this stage, the operations of thinking are not yet fully developed, they are not formalized, depending on specific content, in various subject areas develop unevenly, not united into a coherent system.
Formal operations stage - stage of development of the intellect, characteristic of a child aged 11-12 to 14-15 years. It is a system built on specific operations. Having mastered the formal operations, the child can build his own hypothetico-deductive conclusions based on independent hypotheses and verification of their consequences. Hypothetical and abstract thinking allows you to go into hypothetical worlds, explore and establish significant patterns.
The development of operational thinking, according to Piaget's theory, marks the end of intellectual development, but not all people reach the stage of formal operations. This is characteristic only of highly developed intellectually individuals.
Piaget's experiments on the study of egocentrism were a significant contribution to psychology. So, Piaget posed simple questions to the children, where it was necessary to consider the situation from the point of view of another person. For example, he asked the child how many brothers she had and, having heard the answer: "I have two brothers," he asked the child the following question: "How many brothers does your older brother have?" As a rule, the children could not answer this question correctly and answered that the older brother had only one brother, while forgetting themselves.
The next experiment was more difficult, in which the children were offered a model with three mountains, on the tops of which various objects were located - a mill, a house, a tree. The children were shown several photographs of the layout and asked to choose the one in which all three mountains are located as the child sees them. This task was performed even by small, 3-4* year old children. After that, a doll was placed on the other side of the model, and the experimenter asked the child to choose the photograph that corresponded to the point of view of the doll. The children could no longer cope with this task, and, as a rule, even 6-7-year-old children again chose the photo that reflected their position in front of the model, but not the position of the doll or another person. These experiments allowed Piaget to conclude that it is difficult for preschool children to take someone else's point of view, that is, they are self-centered.
The main achievement of J. Piaget is that he was the first to understand, investigate and discover the specificity and qualitative originality of children's thinking, showed that the thinking of a child differs from the thinking of an adult. The methods developed by him for studying the level of development of the intellect are widely used in modern practical psychology.
The theory of intellectual development of the Swiss biologist and philosopher Jean Piaget covers the period from infancy to adulthood. Piaget focuses on the development of the child's thinking, and above all - the development logical thinking. Piaget believed that the thinking of an adult differs from the thinking of a child in the first place by greater logic.
IN different time Jean Piaget named different stages of intellectual development, but most often there were four: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the stage of concrete operations and the stage of formal operations. The sensorimotor and preoperational stages are manifestations of preconceptual thinking. At this time, the judgments of children relate only to a specific subject, something visual and known to everyone, categorical and isolated: they are not connected by a logical chain. The child understands in the first place judgments by analogy and through a clear example. The central feature of pre-conceptual thinking is egocentrism (not to be confused with egoism). Egocentrism causes not only such a feature of children's logic as insensitivity to contradiction, but also a number of others: syncretism (the tendency to connect everything with everything), transduction (the transition from the particular to the particular, bypassing the general), inconsistency in volume and content.
Starting, somewhere from the age of 7, the child develops already conceptual thinking, starting from the stage of concrete operations and developing at the stage of formal operations.
sensorimotor stage lasts from birth to 2 years and is divided into 6 substages, during which the child consistently demonstrates the following features and achievements: 1) The child has unconditioned reflexes and is not able to think, set a goal and distinguish himself from the environment; 2) Reflexes turn into repetitive actions; 3) The ability to reproduce random, pleasant and interesting results of one's own actions appears; 4) The ability to coordinate actions aimed at prolonging the impression that aroused interest increases; 5) Discovering new ways to get interesting results; 6) The emergence of the ability to imagine missing events in symbolic form. The main achievements of this period include the formation of coordinated movements corresponding to such material structure as grouping, representational construction and intentionality. A particularly noticeable result of this stage is the construction of a permanent object, that is, the understanding of the existence of objects independent of the subject.
preoperative stage characteristic for the age from 2 to 7 years, with two substages. At the first substage, the formed new ability to represent is assimilated by sensorimotor structures, and they must adapt to it. In addition, the child establishes a number of functional patterns, truths and associations regarding environment: for example, understanding the identity and some dependencies and correlations. Distinctive feature children of this age is the surprising limitation of their thinking. One gets the impression that their thought is focused exclusively on one aspect of the situation, often their own point of view (egocentrism), and all other points of view or dimensions are not taken into account. Pre-operational thought, besides focusing on the single most conspicuous aspect of an event, does not appear to follow the laws of logic or physical causation, but rather is limited to contiguity associations. Thus, children's arguments for their actions are often absurd inventions or are the result of their desire to justify themselves at any cost.
Stage of specific operations characterizes the age from 7 to 12 years and is divided into two substages. At this stage, the mistakes that the child makes at the preoperational stage are corrected, but they are corrected in different ways and not all at once. The meaning of the definition "concrete" operation, which is included in the name of this stage, is that the operational solution of problems (i.e., a solution based on reversible mental actions) is taken separately for each problem and depends on its content. For example, physical concepts are assimilated by the child in the following sequence: quantity, length and mass, area, weight, time and volume.
Formal Operations Stage occurs at the age of 12 years and older. The system of reversible operations, becoming more coordinated, enters the next stage of development, formal operations, which begins at the age of 11-12 years. The previously developed ability to classify objects develops into the ability for combinatorial thinking: analyzing a physical event, the child is able to take into account all possible aspects and change them one by one, like a qualified experimenter, in search of a logically sound answer. The ability to vary - mentally and hypothetically - aspects of a situation in a fixed order means that the child can invent objects and situations that do not exist in reality. Thus, possibility takes precedence over reality, and the form is manipulated and considered in isolation from the content, i.e., not in the way a child at the stage of concrete operations does.
Within each stage and substage, Piaget often distinguished three levels: failure, partial success, and success. In the latest versions of his theory, Piaget viewed development not as rectilinear motion from one stage to another, but as a movement in a spiral, characterized by the fact that the various forms and different content of thinking, characteristic of the previous level, are rethought, restructured and integrated, or combined, at the next, more high level. The invariant quantitative aspects of the problem of transforming a clay ball are learned before others.
The fundamental question of Piaget's theory, to which no convincing answer has been found, remains the problem of novelty and spontaneity. How, from a cognitive structure, in which any new Knowledge is completely absent, does it arise - new knowledge? Moreover, how does one come to understand that new knowledge that has arisen is necessarily connected with other knowledge?
Piaget's other theories, supplementing his main theory, deal with the development of moral judgments, perceptual development, the development of representations and memory, all of these lines of development being considered from the point of view of the limitations imposed by the various levels and consequences of our intellectual activity.
