1.According to the lecture notes.
Piaget discovered the phenomenon of egocentrism in children's thinking, which ends at the age of 5-7 years (the period of decentration). This phenomenon is due to the principles of perceptual cognition of the world (for a child, the main channel connecting him with the world around him is perception; mature thinking always has decentration, that is, the ability to “see” events from the outside, from different points of view). Egocentrism is associated with the child's attachment to the space around him (he perceives the world only at the moment and in specific situation). From the age of two, the child begins to adapt to space, thanks to which he can relate himself to different points in space (the beginning of decentration). The most effective way development of decentration of the child's thinking - a group game with rules that allows you to feel the situation from the point of view of different roles (for example, a game of hide and seek)
The egocentrism of the child's thinking is expressed in the fact that the center of the coordinate system for him is his own “I”. Egocentrism is a clear sign of pre-conceptual thinking.
2.According to Piaget.
Egocentrism is a factor of cognition. This is a certain set of pre-critical and, therefore, pre-objective positions in the knowledge of things, other people and oneself. Egocentrism is a kind of systematic and unconscious illusion of knowledge, a form of the initial centralization of the mind, when intellectual relativity and reciprocity are absent. On the one hand, egocentrism means a lack of understanding of the relativity of cognition of the world and coordination of points of view. On the other hand, this is the position of unconsciously attributing the qualities of one's own “I”. The initial egocentrism of cognition is not a hypertrophy of self-awareness. This is a direct relationship to objects, where the subject, ignoring the "I", cannot leave the "I" in order to find his place in the world of relations, freed from subjective connections.
Piaget conducted many different experiments that show that up to a certain age, a child cannot take a different point of view. For example, an experiment with a layout of three mountains. The mountains on the model were of different heights and each of them had some distinctive feature - a house, a river going down the slope, a snowy peak. The experimenter gave the subject several photographs in which all three mountains were depicted from different angles. The house, the river and the snowy peak were clearly visible in the pictures. The subject was asked to choose a photograph where the mountains were depicted as he sees them in this moment, in this perspective. Usually the child would choose the right shot. After that, the experimenter showed him a doll with a head in the form of a smooth ball without a face, so that the child could not follow the direction of the doll's gaze. The toy was placed on the other side of the model. Now, when asked to choose a photo where the mountains were depicted as the doll sees them, the child chose a photo where the mountains were depicted as he sees them himself. If the child and the doll were interchanged, then again and again he chose a picture where the mountains were depicted as he perceives them from his place. Most of the preschool subjects did this.
In this experiment, children fell prey to subjective illusion. They were unaware of the existence of other assessments of things and did not correlate them with their own. Egocentrism means that the child, when imagining nature and other people, does not take into account his own position as a thinking person. Egocentrism means the mixing of subject and object in the process of the act of cognition. Egocentrism shows that the outside world does not act directly on the mind of the subject. Egocentrism is a consequence of external circumstances, among which the subject lives. The main thing (in egocentrism) is the spontaneous position of the subject, who directly relates to the object, not considering himself as a thinking being, not realizing his own point of view.
Piaget emphasized that the decrease in egocentrism is explained not by the addition of knowledge, but by the transformation of the initial position, when the subject correlates his point of view with other possible ones. To free oneself from egocentrism means to realize what was perceived subjectively, to find its place in the system of possible points of view, to establish a system of general mutual relations between things, persons and one's own “I”.
Egocentrism is giving way to decentration, a more perfect position. The transition from egocentrism to decentration characterizes cognition at all levels of development. The universality and inevitability of this process allowed Piaget to call it the law of development. Development (according to Piaget) is a change in mental positions. In order to overcome egocentrism, two conditions are necessary: first, to realize one's own “I” as a subject and to separate the subject from the object; the second is to coordinate your own point of view with others, and not see it as the only one possible.
3. Experimental facts.
In studies of children's ideas about the world and physical causality, Piaget showed that at a certain stage of development, a child considers objects as they are directly perceived - he does not see things in them. internal relations... The child thinks, for example, that the moon follows him during his walks, stops when he stops, runs after him when he runs away. Piaget called this phenomenon "realism." It is this kind of realism that prevents the child from considering things independently of the subject, in their internal relationship... The child considers his instant perception to be true. This is due to the fact that children do not separate their "I" from things. Children up to a certain age do not know how to distinguish between the subjective and the external world. There are two types of realism: intellectual and moral. For example, a child is confident that tree branches are making the wind. This is intellectual realism. Moral realism is expressed in the fact that the child does not take into account the internal intention in assessing the action and judges the action only by the external effect, by the material result.
In experimental studies, Piaget showed that in the early stages intellectual development objects appear to the child as heavy or light according to direct perception. The child always considers big things to be heavy, and small things to be light. For a child, these and many representations are absolute, while direct perception seems to be the only possible one. The emergence of other ideas about things, as, for example, in the experiment with floating bodies: a pebble - light for a child, but heavy for water - means that children's ideas begin to lose their absolute value and become relative. The child cannot find that there are different points of view that need to be considered. Piaget asked, for example: Charles "Do you have brothers?" - "Arthur". "Does he have a brother?" - "No". "How many brothers do you have in your family?" - "Two". "Do you have a brother?" "One". "Does he have brothers?" - "Doesn't have at all." "Are you his brother?" - "Yes". "Then does he have a brother?" - "No".
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Developmental and Developmental Psychology Exam Questions
Question 8: Theory of convergence of biological and social factors.
Theories of convergence of social and biological factors
After reviewing some of the currently most popular psychological theories, we saw that each of them offers a different perspective on the person. In some cases, human nature is determined by innate instincts, in others - the social environment, which provides incentives and reinforcements. Is it possible to combine these factors? After all, it would seem obvious that man is both a biological and a social being. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between?
While trying to answer this question, the theory of convergence, or the theory of two factors, proposed by W. Stern, arose. From his point of view, mental development is the result of the convergence (fusion) of internal data with external conditions. For example, child's play: environment provides material for play, and how and when the child will play depends on the innate instinct for play. The problem arises of elucidating the relative role of heredity and the environment in the development of the child. To solve the problem of the relationship between biological and social in the process of development, an appropriate method was needed. This method was found in comparative studies of twins (twin method). It is known that twins are monozygous (MZ - with identical heredity) and dizygotic (DZ - with a different hereditary basis). If children with different heredities in the same external conditions will develop in different ways, which means that this development is determined by the factor of heredity, if it is about the same, then the environment plays a decisive role. Similarly with monozygotic twins: if they live in different conditions (in different families) and at the same time the indicators of their mental development are the same, this may indicate that the decisive role belongs to heredity, if they are different, to the environment. Comparing the coefficients of differences between MZ - and DZ - twins living in the same and different conditions, one can judge the relative role of hereditary and environmental factors. This method is fundamental for psychogenetics - a science that studies the role of the environment and heredity in the human psyche in general and in the development of the child in particular.
From the theory of two factors, it follows that children with identical heredity, living in the same external conditions, should be exactly the same. However, this does not happen. Both parents and psychologists have repeatedly noted that monozygous twins grow up in the same family completely by different people despite the identity of both factors. Why does this happen? Maybe both the heredity factor and the environmental factor are not the main ones that determine the development of the child?
Evidence and observation of a child can only be explained and interpreted on the basis of any psychological theory giving general idea about human development. Theory allows you to systematize the observed facts, highlight the main lines of the child's development, and also provides specific concepts and terms to describe the behavior of children.
Historically, there have been two main groups of theories of child development - the theory of preformism and the theory of social learning. In one of them, development is understood as the maturation of innate mechanisms, in the other - as the accumulation of individual experience of interaction with the environment. Convergence theory, trying to overcome the shortcomings of these two approaches, is built on the idea that the development of a child is determined by factors of heredity and environment at the same time.
2. Theory of cognitive development g. Piaget
The basic concepts considered in this theory in relation to development: intelligence, thinking. J. Piaget defines development as a process of active construction in which children build increasingly differentiated and overarching cognitive structures or schemas. Scheme- any pattern (drawing, sample) of action that provides contact with the environment.
Intelligence is adaptive in nature and performs the function of balancing the body with the external environment... The adaptation of the body to the environment is achieved through balancing mechanisms of development- assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation – inclusion of the object in the existing schemes of action(ensuring stabilization and conservation). Accommodation- changing the scheme of action in accordance with the characteristics of the object(growth and change).
Development is determined complex system of determinants: heredity, environment and activity of the subject. Children's thinking is formed through learning organized by adults (environmental factor), which is based on the level of development achieved by the child (heredity factors). At the same time, children interact with the environment, building their own cognitive structures (activity factors).
In the process of developing intelligencethere is a sequential change of stages reflecting various logical structures of thinking, ways of processing information. Final goal development of thinking - the formation of formal-logical operations.
Stages of the child's intellectual development:
Piaget's greatest discovery is the discovery of the phenomenon of egocentrism in children's thinking. Egocentrism is a special cognitive position taken by the subject in relation to the surrounding world, when phenomena and objects are considered by him subcritically, pre-objectively only from his own point of view, which is absolutized and manifests itself in the inability to coordinate different points of view on the subject. For example, in a situation of parents' divorce, a child may consider himself guilty, arguing as follows: “I did not listen to my dad when he told me. I am bad, so he left. "
Characteristics of a child's egocentric thinking: syncretism(fusion) of children's thinking - the perception of an image without analyzing the details, the tendency to associate everything with everything; juxtaposition- the tendency to associate everything with everything; intellectual realism- identification of their ideas about things with real objects; animism- general animation; artificalism- idea of artificial origin natural phenomena;insensitivity to controversy;impervious to experience;transduction- the transition from the particular to the particular, bypassing the general; pretentiousness- inability to establish causal relationships; weakness of introspection(self-observation).
An important discovery by J. Piaget is the discovery of the central feature of children's thinking - egocentrism.
Egocentrism is a special cognitive position that the subject takes in relation to the world around him. He considers all phenomena and objects only from his own point of view. He sees objects as they are directly perceived, while he does not understand internal relations. For example, when explaining why the moon moves across the sky, he says because I am walking, but stops because I stop. Piaget called this feature realism. Realism is when "the world exists in my sensations."
Realism can be intellectual, as in the above example, and moral. Moral realism is expressed in the fact that the child does not take into account the inner intention in his actions, he judges the action only by the external effect.
Children's performances have a number of features:
- animism - animation inanimate objects, phenomena;
- artificalism - phenomena are understood as human activity, i.e. everything exists as created by man and for man (the sun shines so that we can have light; the river so that boats float on it, etc.);
- participation - participation.
Gradually, children's ideas move from realism or absoluteness to reciprocity (reciprocity). Reciprocity is manifested in the fact that the child begins to discover the points of view of other people, but he ascribes to them the same meaning as his own point of view, thus, a correspondence is established between these points of view. For example, he thinks like this: "It seems to me that this object is green, but in fact it is white, just green light falls on it."
The next direction in which the child's thought develops is from realism to relativism, i.e. to relativity. At first, children think there are absolute qualities. Then they discover that our estimates are relative. Thus, realism presupposes the perception of separate objects, and relativism presupposes the perception of relations between objects.
For example, relatively light and relatively heavy, these words are already losing their absolute meaning (a small carnation sinks in the water and a large board does not sink).
J. Piaget showed that the development of a child's thinking proceeds in three interrelated directions.
Egocentrism influences the originality of children's thinking, the originality of children's logic is manifested:
- syncretism - a tendency to link everything in everything without proper analysis ("lack of connection");
- juxtaposition - absence causation between judgments, inability to unite, synthesis ("excess of connection");
- transduction - the transition in reasoning from the particular to the particular, bypassing the general;
- weakness of children's introspection (self-observation), etc.
All features have one reason, which depends on egocentrism, this is the child's inability to perform logical operations addition and multiplication.
Logical addition is finding the class that is least common to two other classes, but contains both of these classes in itself.
Example: animals = vertebrates + invertebrates
Logical multiplication is finding the largest class contained in two classes at the same time, i.e. finding a set of elements inherent in two classes.
Example: Geneva x Protestants = Geneva Protestants.
The lack of this skill is evident in the way children define concepts.
The situation is even more difficult with relative concepts: right, left side, family members.
The inability to perform logical addition and multiplication leads to contradictions that are characteristic of children's concepts. Contradictions are the result of a lack of balance. He considered the emergence of the reversibility of thought to be the criterion of stable equilibrium. Reversibility of thought is such a mental action when, starting from the results of the first action, the child performs a mental action symmetrical with respect to him, and when this symmetric operation leads to the initial state of the object without modifying it.
V real world there is no reversibility, it is inherent only in intellectual operations. Therefore, the reversibility of thought cannot arise from observations of natural phenomena. It arises from the awareness of ourselves mental operations, which a logical experiment does not over things, but over itself. The reason for the lack of reversibility of thought is in egocentrism.
Egocentrism manifests itself in another feature of the child's psyche - in the phenomenon of egocentric speech.
J. Piaget believed that children's speech is egocentric, first of all, because the child speaks only from “his own point of view” and does not even try to take the point of view of the interlocutor. He believed that only the semblance of interest is important to the child, he does not feel the desire to somehow influence the interlocutor, to tell him something. For a child, anyone he meets is an interlocutor. For this statement, he was criticized by many scientists, among them L.S. Vygotsky, V. Stern, Eysenck and others.
Subsequently, J. Piaget explained that egocentric speech does not cover the entire speech of a child. The coefficient of egocentric speech changes. Where an authoritative adult dominates and a coercive relationship is characteristic, egocentric speech occupies a significant place. Among peers, when disputes, discussions are possible, the percentage of egocentric speech is lower. V different types activities, it can also occupy different meaning: There is more egocentric speech in play than in experimentation or children's work. The ratio of egocentric speech also changes with age. At 3 years old, the percentage of egocentric speech is highest (75%), from 3 to 7 years it gradually decreases, and after 7 years egocentric speech disappears. And egocentrism is giving way to decentration, a more perfect position. The universality and inevitability of this process allowed Piaget to call it the law of development.
Why is this shift happening? The reason lies in quality development childish mind, i.e. in a progressively developing awareness of one's "I". The development of knowledge about oneself arises in a child from social interaction... Under the influence of developing social relationships, mental attitudes change. In society, there are two extreme types of relationships: coercive relationships and cooperative relationships.
Coercive relationships are characteristic of the relationship between an adult and a child, when adults impose on the child a system of mandatory rules. The child respects the adult's thought, and the adult perceives the child's judgments as childish, naive. Thus, the thought of the adult supplants the thought of the child. This relationship is not conducive to a change in mental attitude. The information that the adult gives is distorted by the child, he tries to assimilate it to his own mental structure. These relationships do not lead to the child's awareness of his subjectivity. The child tries to imitate the adult and at the same time tries to protect himself from him, there is no exchange of opinions.
Cooperative relationships are built on mutual respect, which is only possible between peers. When cooperating, it becomes necessary to adapt to another person, an opportunity arises to prove one's thought, to express doubt. The child understands that there are different points of view, in this case socialization occurs. Socialization, according to Piaget, is a process of adaptation to social environment, consisting in the fact that a child, having reached a certain level of development, becomes capable of cooperation with other people due to the separation and cooperation of his point of view and the points of view of other people. In the process of socialization, there is a transition from an egocentric position to an objective one. This turning point occurs at the age of 7–8 years. Until that time, the child's interaction with the world around him is subject to the laws of biological adaptation. Then development proceeds according to social laws.
The position of J. Piaget regarding egocentric speech was criticized by L.S. Vygotsky. He offered his own interpretation of this phenomenon. L.S. Vygotsky believed that first external speech appears, directed at an adult, it performs the function of communication. Then only a loud speech appears, addressed to oneself. This is egocentric speech, which performs the function of planning and regulating activities. Then this loud speech for himself, as it were, goes inside, the child begins to think "to himself", he plans, regulates his activity in the mind, ie. appears internal way thinking. According to L.S. Vygotsky, egocentric speech is transitional, this is the manifestation of the law of interiorization. By virtue of its transitional nature, egocentric speech performs both communicative functions characteristic of external speech, and regulatory functions characteristic of inner speech... If the child communicated with foreign-language peers or a glass partition was placed between the children, which made it impossible to hear the partner, and the child found that he was not heard or understood, then the number of egocentric statements immediately decreased. This indicates that egocentric speech performs a communicative function. J. Piaget has a different opinion on this matter.
L.S. Vygotsky noted that a surge of egocentric speech is found in those cases when the child experiences difficulties in activity. This is also typical for adults, when they solve complex problems, they often reason out loud. it is the planning function of speech. Therefore, egocentric speech is transitional form from communicative speech to planning (internal) speech.
L.S. Vygotsky believed that egocentric speech is a stage in the internalization of speech, which performs the function of planning speech and its subsequent transformation into a child's way of thinking. And J. Piaget believed that egocentric speech is speech that expresses the child's special cognitive position.
Self-study assignments
Literature:
1. Obukhova, LF Age psychology: textbook. for universities / L. V. Obukhova. - M.: Higher. education; MGPPU, 2006 .-- 460 p.
Chapter 5. Teachings of Jean Piaget about the intellectual development of the child, p. 168-216.
2. Shapovalenko, I. V. Developmental psychology: (psychology of development and age-related psychology): textbook. for university students studying in the direction and specialties of psychology / I. V. Shapovalenko. - M.: Gardariki, 2005 .-- 349 p. (any edition is possible).
Chapter 9. Mental development as the development of intelligence: the concept of J. Piaget, p. 108-124.
3. Piaget, J. Selected psychological works: trans. from English and fr. / entered. Art. V. A. Lektorsky. - M.: Mezhdunar. ped. acad., 1994 .-- 680 p.
Meet to scientific biography J. Piaget.
The essence genetic psychology created by J. Piaget. The basic concepts of the concept of J. Piaget: the principle of equilibrium, the idea of transformation, the idea of construction, the scheme of action, assimilation, accommodation. Egocentrism of children's thinking. The phenomenon of egocentric speech. Grouping concept. Factors in the development of intelligence. Characteristics of the stages of intellectual development: sensorimotor, stage of specific operations and stage of formal operations.
Get acquainted with excerpts from the work of J. Piaget:
1. Features of intuitive (visual) thinking.
2. Lack of fluid retention.
3. Lack of preservation of free-flowing substances.
4. No saving when using different subjects.
When studying the experimental material, characterize the series of experiments conducted by J. Piaget, show the features of intuitive thinking, the lack of preservation of liquid, bulk substances and various objects. What results did the scientist get during experimental work? What conclusions did he draw based on the results? Pay attention to the specifics of the use of the method of clinical conversation by the author.
Psychoanalytic theories of child development Two of Freud's discoveries - the discovery of the unconscious and the discovery of the sexual principle - form the basis of the theoretical concept of psychoanalysis. In the last model of personality 3. Freud identified three main components: "It", "I" and "Super-I". “It” is the most primitive component, the bearer of instincts, “the seething cauldron of drives,” obeys the principle of pleasure. Instance "I" follows the principle of reality and takes into account the peculiarities outside world... "Super-I" serves as the bearer of moral norms. Since the requirements for “I” from “It”, “Super-I” and reality are incompatible, it is inevitable that he will be in a situation of conflict that creates unbearable tension, from which the person is saved with the help of special “protective mechanisms” - such, for example, displacement, projection, regression, sublimation. All stages of mental development 3. Freud reduces to the stages of transformation and movement through various erogenous zones of libidinal, or sexual, energy. Oral stage (0-1 years). The main source of pleasure is centered on the feeding activity zone. Anal stage(1-3 years old). Libido concentrates around the anus, which becomes the object of attention of the child, accustomed to cleanliness. The phallic stage (3-5 years) characterizes the highest degree of child sexuality. The genital organs become the leading erogenous zone. The sexuality of this stage is substantive and directed towards the parents. Liberal attachment to parents of the opposite sex 3. Freud called the Oedipus complex for boys and the Electra complex for girls. Latent stage (5-12 years). Decreased sexual interest. The energy of libido is transferred to the development of universal human experience. Genital stage (12-18 years old). According to 3. Freud, a teenager strives for one goal - normal sexual intercourse, all erogenous zones unite. If the implementation of normal sexual intercourse is difficult, then one can observe the phenomena of fixation or regression to one of the previous stages. The development of psychoanalysis received in the works of the daughter of 3. Freud - Anna Freud. Adhering to the structure of personality, classical for psychoanalysis, in the instinctive part of it, she singled out the sexual and aggressive components. Child development A. Freud considers it as a process of gradual socialization of the child, subject to the law of transition from the principle of pleasure to the principle of reality.
Question number 8. The problem of the development of thinking in early works J. Piaget. Theoretical and experimental criticism in Russian and foreign psychology.
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) is one of the world's foremost psychologists. We distinguish two periods of it scientific creativity- early and late. In his early works (up to the mid-1930s), Piaget explains the patterns of the development of thinking in terms of two factors - heredity and environment, by virtue of which they can be classified as two-factor theories.
He was interested in the laws of human cognition of the world. In order to understand how cognition of the world occurs, he considered it necessary to turn to the study of how the instrument of such cognition arises in human thinking. The scientist saw the key to solving the problem posed in the study of the development of the child's thinking.
L. S. Vygotsky, evaluating the contribution of J. Piaget to psychology, wrote that the work of the latter constituted an entire era in the study of children's thinking. They fundamentally changed the idea of a child's thinking and development. What is the reason for this? Before Piaget, the thinking of a child was compared to that of an adult. thinking of a "little adult". Piaget began to consider children's thinking as thinking characterized by a qualitative originality.
Piaget suggested new method the study of thinking - a method of clinical conversation aimed at studying the patterns of development and functioning of thinking, representing a variant of the experiment. Piaget's original postulate early period became the provision that thinking is directly expressed in speech. This provision determined all the difficulties and mistakes of his early theory... It was this position that became the subject of criticism of L. S. Vygotsky, who defended the thesis of the complex interdependent relations of thinking and speech. It was from the position of the direct connection between thinking and speech that Piaget rejected in his future works.
The conversation made it possible, according to the psychologist, to study the thinking of the child, because the child's answers to the questions of the adult reveal a living process of thinking to the researcher.
Piaget's early concept is based on three theoretical sources - the theory of the French sociological school about collective representations; 3. Freud's theory and research primitive thinking L. Levy-Bruhl.
So, the starting point for the theory of J. Piaget was the following three provisions:
1. The development of the child's thinking is carried out by assimilation
collective representations (socialized forms of cape
l) in the course of verbal communication.
2. Initially, thinking is aimed at getting pleasure
society, then this kind of thinking is supplanted by society, and the child
other forms of it are imposed, corresponding to the principle of re
alities.
3. A child's thinking has a qualitative originality.
The development of a child's thinking, according to Piaget, is a change in mental positions, which is characterized by the transition from egocentrism to decentration.
The greatest discovery Piaget is the discovery of the phenomenon of self-centeredness in children's thinking. Egocentrism is a special cognitive position taken by the subject in relation to the surrounding world, when phenomena and objects are considered only from their own point of view. Egocentrism is the absolutization of one's own cognitive perspective and the inability to coordinate different points of view on the subject.
The merit of J. Piaget lies in the fact that he not only discovered the phenomenon of egocentrism, but also showed the process of the development of a child's thinking as a transition from egocentrism to decentration. The researcher identified three steps in this process: 1) the identification of the subject and the object, the inability to separate oneself and the world; 2) egocentrism - knowledge of the world based on one's own position, inability to coordinate different points sight of an object; 3) decentration - coordination of one's own point of view with other possible views of the object.
Thus, the development of a child's thinking is carried out in three interrelated directions. The first is the separation of objective and subjective perception of the world. The second is the development of the mental position - from the absolutization of the subject's mental position to the coordination of a number of possible positions and, accordingly, to reciprocity. The third direction characterizes the development of thinking as a movement from the perception of individual things to the perception of connections between them.
J. Piaget singled out the characteristics of a child's thinking that make up his qualitative originality:
* syncretism of thinking - a spontaneous tendency of children to perceive
take global images without analyzing details, the tendency to connect
call everything with everything, without proper analysis ("lack of connection");
* juxtaposition - the inability to unite and synthesize ("from
everyday communication ");
* intellectual realism - the identification of their representations
about things of the objective world and real objects. Analogous to intellectual moral realism;
■ participation - the law of participation (“nothing is accidental”);
Animism as universal animation;
* artificalism as an idea of artificial origin
walking natural phenomena. For example, a child is asked: "Where do rivers come from?" Answer: “People have dug channels and
filled them with water ”;
* insensitivity to contradictions;
* impermeability to experience;
* transduction - the transition from a particular position to another part
nomu, bypassing the general;
* entrepreneurial spirit - the inability to establish a causal
investigative connections. For example, a child is asked to complete
a sentence interrupted by the words "because". Man suddenly
fell in the street because ... The child finishes: he was taken to
hospital;
* weakness of children's introspection (self-observation).
The overall challenge facing Piaget was aimed at revealing psychological mechanisms holistic logical structures, but at first he identified and investigated more particular problem- studied the hidden mental tendencies that give a qualitative originality to children's thinking, and outlined the mechanisms of their occurrence and change.
The facts established by Piaget using the clinical method in his early studies of the content and form of children's thought.
the discovery of the egocentric nature of children's speech
qualitative features of children's logic
original in their content the child's ideas about the world
However, Piaget's main achievement is the discovery of the child's egocentrism.
Egocentrism.
Egocentrism is a central feature of thinking, a hidden mental attitude. The originality of children's logic, children's speech, children's ideas about the world is only a consequence of this egocentric mental position.
Egocentrism as the main feature of children's thinking consists in judging the world exclusively from its immediate point of view, “fragmentary and personal,” and in the inability to take into account someone else's. Egocentrism is considered by Piaget as a kind of unconscious systematic illusion of cognition, as a latent mental position of a child. Nevertheless, egocentric thinking is not a simple imprint of the influences of the external world, it is an active cognitive position in its origins, the initial cognitive centralization of the mind (Shapovalenko).
Piaget sees egocentrism as the root, as the foundation of all other features of children's thinking. Self-centeredness does not lend itself direct observation, it expresses itself through other phenomena. Let's consider them.
Realism.
In studies of children's ideas about the world and physical causality, Piaget showed that a child at a certain stage of development in most cases considers objects as they are given by direct perception, that is, he does not see things in their internal relationships (the moon follows the child during his walks ). It is this kind of realism that prevents the child from considering things independently of the subject, in their internal interconnection. The child considers his instant perception to be absolutely true. This happens because children do not separate their "I" from the world around them, from things.
"Realism" is of two types:
intelligent (for example, a child is sure that the branches of a tree do);
moral (the child does not take into account the internal intention in assessing the act and judges the act only by the external effect, by the material result)
Animism.
It is a general animation, endowing things (primarily those moving independently, such as clouds, river, moon, car) with consciousness and life, feelings.
Artificalism.
This is an understanding of natural phenomena by analogy with human activity, everything that exists is considered as created by man, by his will or for man (the sun - "so that we have light", the river - "so that the boats sail").
Piaget believes that parallel to the evolution of children's ideas about the world, directed from realism to objectivity, children's ideas are developing from absoluteness ("realism") to reciprocity (reciprocity).
Reciprocity appears when a child discovers the points of view of other people, when he ascribes to them the same meaning as his own, when a correspondence is established between these points of view.
In experimental studies, Piaget showed a lack of understanding of the principle of conservation of the amount of matter when changing the shape of an object. This once again confirms that the child at first can reason only on the basis of "absolute" ideas. For him, two plasticine balls of equal weight cease to be equal as soon as one of them takes a different shape, for example, a cup.
In subsequent studies, he used the emergence of the child's understanding of the principle of conservation as a criterion for the emergence of logical operations and devoted experiments to its genesis related to the formation of concepts of number, movement, speed, space, quantity, etc.
The child's thought also develops in a third direction - from realism to relativism. Initially, children believe in the existence of absolute substances and absolute qualities. They later discover that phenomena are related and that our assessments are relative.
So, according to its content, children's thought, which at first does not completely separate the subject from the object and therefore is "realistic", develops towards objectivity, reciprocity and relativity Piaget believed that gradual dissociation, the separation of subject and object is carried out as a result of the child overcoming his own egocentrism.
Other features of children's logic:
Syncretism (global schema and subjectivity of children's manifestations; the tendency to associate everything with everything; the perception of details, causes and effects as opposed to each other).
Transduction (transition from the particular to the particular, bypassing the general).
Failure to synthesize and fit (lack of communication between judgments).
Insensitive to contradiction.
Inability to observe introspection.
Difficulties in comprehension.
Impermeability to experience (the child is not isolated from external influence, education, but it is assimilated and deformed by him).
All these features of children's thinking, according to Piaget, have one common feature, which is also internally dependent on egocentrism. It consists in the fact that a child under 7-8 years old does not know how to perform logical operations of addition and multiplication of a class.
Logical addition is finding the class that is least common to the other two classes, but contains both of these classes in itself. (animals = vertebrates + invertebrates).
Logical multiplication is an operation that consists in finding the largest class contained simultaneously in two classes, that is, finding a set of elements common to two classes (Geneva x Protestants = Geneva Protestants).
The lack of this skill is most clearly manifested in the way children define a concept.
It is especially difficult for a child to define relative concepts- after all, he thinks about things absolutely, not realizing (as experiments show) the relationship between them.
The inability to perform logical addition and multiplication leads to contradictions that are saturated with children's definitions of concepts.
Contradiction is characterized as the result of an imbalance: a concept gets rid of contradiction when equilibrium is achieved.
He considered the emergence of the reversibility of thought to be the criterion of stable equilibrium. He understood it as such a mental action, when, starting from the results of the first action, the child performs a mental action symmetrical with respect to him, and when this symmetrical operation leads to the initial state of the object without modifying it.
Logical experience is the experience of the subject over himself, since he is a thinking subject, an experience similar to that which is done over himself in order to regulate his moral behavior; it is an effort to become aware of one's own mental operations (and not just their results) in order to see if they are related or contradictory.
To form a child's truly scientific thinking, and not a simple set of empirical knowledge, it is not enough to conduct a physical experiment with memorizing the results obtained. This requires a special kind of experience - logical and mathematical, aimed at the actions and operations performed by the child with real objects.
In his early works, Piaget associated the lack of reversibility of thought with the child's egocentrism. But before turning to the characteristics of this central phenomenon, let us dwell on one more important feature the child's psyche - the phenomenon of egocentric speech.
(Regardless of the environment, the coefficient of verbal egocentrism decreases with age. At three years old it reaches its highest value: 75% of all spontaneous speech. From three to six years, egocentric speech gradually decreases, and after seven years, according to Piaget, it disappears).
Verbal egocentrism
Serves only as an external expression of the deeper intellectual and social position of the child. Piaget called this spontaneous mental attitude egocentrism.
The term "egocentrism" has caused a number of misunderstandings. Piaget acknowledged the failure of the word choice, but since the term had already become widespread, he tried to clarify its meaning.
Egocentrism, according to Piaget, is a factor of cognition. This is a certain set of subcritical and, therefore, pre-objective positions in the knowledge of things, other people and oneself.
Egocentrism is a kind of systematic and unconscious illusion of knowledge, a form of the initial centralization of the mind, when there is no intellectual relativity and reciprocity.
Therefore, Piaget later considered the term "centralization" to be a more apt term. On the one hand, egocentrism means a lack of understanding of the relativity of cognition of the world and the coordination of points of view. On the other hand, this is the position of unconsciously attributing the qualities of one's own "I" and one's own perspective to things and other people. The initial egocentrism of cognition is not a hypertrophy of the awareness of "I". On the contrary, this is a direct relation to objects, where the subject, ignoring the "I", cannot leave the "I" in order to find his place in the world of relations, freed from subjective connections.
The existence of an egocentric position in knowledge does not predetermine that our knowledge will never be able to give a true picture of the world. After all, development, according to Piaget, is a change in mental positions. Egocentrism is giving way to decentration, a more perfect position. The transition from egocentrism to decentration characterizes cognition at all levels of development.
Piaget believed that only the qualitative development of the child's mind, that is, the progressively developing awareness of one's "I", can lead to this. In order to overcome egocentrism, two conditions are necessary:
the first to realize one's "I" as a subject and to separate the subject from the object;
the second is to coordinate your own point of view with others, and not see it as the only one possible.
The development of knowledge about oneself arises in a child, according to Piaget, from social interaction. The change in mental positions is carried out under the influence of the developing social relationships of individuals. Piaget's society considers the way it acts for a child, that is, as the amount social relations, among which two extreme types can be distinguished:
Coercive relationships
cooperative relationship
Coercive relationships impose on the child a system of binding rules. As a result of coercion, moral and intellectual "realism" arises.
Cooperative relationships are built on the basis of mutual respect, which is possible only between children of the same age. When cooperating, there is a need to adapt to another person. Rational elements are formed in logic and ethics.
One of the most important concepts in Piaget's system of psychological views is the concept of socialization.
According to Piaget, socialization is a process of adaptation to the social environment, consisting in the fact that a child, having reached a certain level of development, becomes able to cooperate with other people by sharing and coordinating his point of view and the points of view of other people. Socialization leads to a decisive turn in mental development child - the transition from an egocentric position to an objective one.
Each external influence presupposes two complementary processes on the part of the subject: assimilation and accommodation.
Assimilation and accommodation are the roots of two antagonistic tendencies that manifest when the body encounters something new.
Assimilation consists in the adaptation of the object to the subject, in which the object is deprived of its specific features. ("A child is a slave of direct perception").
Accommodation, on the other hand, consists in the adaptation of the previously formed reactions of the subject to the object with the transition to new ways of reacting.
In terms of their functions, these processes are opposite.
