Introduction au travail de Piaget

Introduction to Piaget's Work

• Piaget's primary focus wasn't child study; rather, his work was epistemological.
• He considered himself a logician more than a psychologist, interested in the genesis of logical operations generally, not in individual subjects.
• Piaget meticulously described developmental stages as arising from inherent system organization laws.
• He defined these laws according to both their synchronous interactions within cognitive structures and their diachronic progression in time.
• Piaget argued that child psychology can serve as a general explanatory method in psychology, as a structure's progressive formation explains its existence.
• This method further extends to "genetic epistemology," addressing questions in the philosophy of science.
• Piaget emphasized that logic is not innate but develops gradually.
• There's a genesis or developmental sequence of logical thought patterns.
• A genesis is a transformative process, moving from a less stable initial state (A) to a significantly more stable final state (B).

Piaget's Research Methods

• Piaget's method incorporates experimental and clinical psychiatric approaches.
• He developed a clinical method for child psychology.
• Initial tools included tests and observation.
• Tests: Standardized questions across subjects. Responses are measured against a quantitative or qualitative scale. Tests allow diagnosis, but don’t explain why. Varying questions can address this.
• Observation: Allows for observation of spontaneous child behavior, however, it's restrictive in terms of sample size and control.
• Clinical method: Characterized by flexible, conversational interaction (asking questions, eliciting explanations and justifications).

Epistemological Data

• Intelligence: For Piaget, intelligence is a form of adaptation, representing a continuous creation of increasingly complex forms and a progressive balance between these forms and the environment.

• Adaptation: Adaptation is the conservation and survival of individuals through equilibrium between organism and environment. It's a progression from less stable to more stable balance.

  • Two forms of adaptation:
    • State adaptation: No clear, specific details.
    • Process adaptation: Focuses on organism's transformation in relation to the environment, maximizing beneficial exchanges with it.

• Assimilation: Incorporating environmental elements into pre-existing structures. This includes:

  • Reproductive Assimilation: Repeating actions to maintain positive outcomes.
  • Discriminative (recognitive) Assimilation: Differentiating between elements and adjusting the structure to prioritize appropriate ones.
  • Transpositive/Generalizing Assimilation: Extending a structure to new elements.

• Accommodation: Modifying structures according to the environment. It results from environmental pressures. This can be seen in:

  • Refining and adapting existing schemas to changing conditions
  • Developing new schemas.

• Schemas: Transposable, generalizable, or differentiable action patterns. They indicate the common elements in successive applications of an action.

  • Examples of schemas are seen in behavior like; an infant piling objects, a child structuring and classifying objects.
  • Schemas are relational, linking actions with common operations.

• Equilibrium: A process of progressing from one approximation of equilibrium to another through various imbalances and re-establishments, culminating in increasingly stable structurings.

  • Each developmental stage involves a level of equilibrium.
  • Stages are characterized by successive equilibration processes.

• Decalages (shifts): Repeating forming processes at different ages. There are two types:

  • Horizontal Decalages: Applying the same operation to different content at the same developmental stage.
  • Vertical Decalages: Reconstructing a structure via different operations, occurring across different developmental stages.

Criteria for Stage Delimitation

• Stage criteria:
  • Constant sequence: Acquiring abilities follows consistent order, despite individual experience/environment variations.
  • Integrative nature: Structures developed in one stage become integrated in subsequent stages.
  • Comprehensive structure: Each stage is defined by an overall structure (e.g., groupings found within concrete operations).
  • Preparation & completion stages: Stages have preparational and definitive stages.

Factors of Mental Development

• Mental development is influenced by:
  • Nervous system maturation
  • Exercises/experiences from interacting with objects
  • Social interactions/transformations
  • Equilibration: An internal driving force behind higher levels of structuring through reflection and reconstruction.

Stages of Cognitive Development

• Sensorimotor intelligence: Birth to approximately 2 years
• Symbolic or preoperational intelligence: Approximately 2 to 7-8 years
• Concrete operational intelligence: Approximately 7-8 to 11-12 years