Piaget

Excerpt

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a renowned psychologist of the 20th century and a pioneer in developmental child psychology. Piaget did not accept the prevailing theory that knowledge was innate or a priori. Instead, he believed a child’s knowledge and understanding of the world developed over time, through the child’s interaction with the world, empirically. His cogitations on cognitive development in parallel with his epistemological view gave birth to the study of genetic epistemology. Most famously, Piaget was able to perceive how children created schemas that shaped their perceptions, cognitions, and judgment of the world. He classified the child’s development into four sequential periods: (1) The sensorimotor period from birth through the first 18 to 24 months, (2) the pre-operations period between the ages of two and seven years old, (3) the concrete operations period between the ages seven and 11 years old, and (4) the formal operations period that begins around age 11 and continues through adolescence.