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jean piaget

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Jean Piaget Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) was employed at the Binet Institute in the 1920s, where his job was to develop French versions of questions on English intelligence tests. He became intrigued with the reasons children gave for their wrong answers on the questions that required logical thinking. He believed that these incorrect answers revealed important differences between the thinking of adults and children. Piaget (1936) was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development. His contributions include a theory of cognitive child development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a series of simple but ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities. Before Piaget’s work, …show more content…

He used the following research methods: Naturalistic observation: Piaget made careful, detailed observations of children. These were mainly his own children and the children of friends. From these he wrote diary descriptions charting their development. Clinical interviews and observations of older children who were able to understand questions and hold conversations. Piaget believed that children think differently than adults and stated they go through 4 universal stages of cognitive development. Development is therefore biologically based and changes as the child matures. Cognition therefore develops in all children in the same sequence of stages. Each child goes through the stages in the same order, and no stage can be missed out - although some individuals may never attain the later stages. There are individual differences in the rate at which children progress through stages. Piaget (1952) believed that these stages are universal - i.e. that the same sequence of development occurs in children all over the world, whatever their culture. Stage of Development Key Feature Research Study Sensorimotor 0 - 2 yrs. Object Permanence Blanket & Ball Study Preoperational 2 - 7 yrs. Egocentrism Three Mountains Concrete Operational 7 – 11 yrs. Conservation Conservation of Number Formal Operational 11yrs + Manipulate ideas in head, e.g. Abstract Reasoning Pendulum Task Educational Implications Piaget

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