Jean Piaget

Born: August 9, 1896 in Neuchatel (Switzerland).

Died: September 16, 1980 in Geneva.

Swiss psychologist.

Proposed the concept of development by stages the psyche. In the first works ( "Speech and Thought of the Child", 1923) analyzed in detail the specifics of quality children's thinking
. Using the method of clinical interviews, . advanced, . relying on the opinions of children, . provision that, . that the main distinguishing characteristics of cognitive activity is the egocentricity, . by virtue of which he mixes subjective and objective, . carries its own internal promptings to real communications things,
. In thinking of the child found and such features, . like magic (words and gestures made effective impact on the external objects), . animism (these items are given consciousness and will), . artifitsializm (phenomena of the world are manufactured in human beings for their own purposes),
. These properties are reflected in the thinking egocentric speech, expressing the "logic of feelings" and not fulfilling the communicative function. Egocentrism is overcome by socialization.
Later Piaget has revised this view, developing a particular logical system to describe the development of the psyche of the child. as the transformation of committed, his actions (operations). From the system of real external actions (sensorimotor intelligence), which are coordinated in a holistic system, and transformed into internal actions (interiorization). appears logical-mathematical structure of human cognition. This action should buy special signs and turn into operation. Sensorimotor and preoperational stages are replaced by the operational. The interdependence of operations, their reversibility (for each operation is the opposite or the inverse operation) to create sustainable and at the same time moving coherent structure. From the stage of concrete operations (Piaget, which dated the primary school age) thinking moves to the stage of formal logical operations, which is completed to 15 years ( "Psychology of Intelligence", 1946). The principles of the operational concept of intelligence Piaget believed the key to understanding the evolution of thinking in different historical periods and for different areas of knowledge, . developing, . from that position, . particular direction of research, . which he called genetic epistemology.,