| stages | Age | characteristic behavior |
| sensorimotor | From birth to 1.5-2 years | Babies learn about the world only through various actions: looking, grasping, sucking, biting, chewing, etc. |
| Preoperational | 2 to 7 years old | Young children form concepts and use symbols, such as language, to communicate those concepts to others. These concepts are limited to their personal (egocentric), direct experience. In the pre-operational stage, children have very limited, sometimes "magical" ideas about cause and effect and experience significant difficulty in classifying objects or events. |
| specific operations | From 7 to 11-12 years old | Children begin to think logically, classify objects according to several criteria and operate with mathematical concepts (provided that these operations are applied to specific objects or events). At the stage of concrete operations, children reach an understanding of conservation |
| Formal operations | From the age of 12 or later | Adolescents are able to analyze the solution of logical problems of both concrete and abstract content: they can systematically think about all the possibilities, plan for the future or recall the past, and also reason by analogy and metaphor |
sensorimotor stage(from birth to 2 years) - here adaptation is carried out in the form of detailed and consistent material actions of the child. Infants use action patterns: looking, grasping, etc. - to get acquainted with the world around them. This stage is called sensorimotor because the baby's intellect relies on the data of the sense organs and bodily movements when balancing.
preoperative stage(from 2 to 7 years) - according to J. Piaget, it begins at a time when children begin to speak and use language and other symbolic means (imitation, play). At this stage, the child's thinking tends to be overly concrete, irreversible, egocentric, and it is difficult for them to classify objects.
During the preoperational stage, children experience the world primarily through their own actions. They do not put forward broad general theories about brick houses, grandmothers or dogs, but use their everyday experience to build specific knowledge. At the preoperational stage, children do not generalize about a whole class of objects, nor can they think through the consequences of a particular chain of events. In addition, they do not understand the difference between a symbol and the object it denotes. At the beginning of this stage, children take names so seriously that they cannot separate their literal meaning from the things they represent. By the end of the stage, due to repetition in various situations, the outer Children begin to think logically, classify objects according to several criteria and operate with mathematical concepts (provided that these operations are applied to specific objects or events). The word "operation" in the theory of J. Piaget has a precise meaning. To understand it, three things must be learned.
First. Operations are actions. True, they are not physical manipulations, since they are carried out only in the mind. Nevertheless, these are actions and their source is the physical actions of the sensorimotor period.
Second. The actions from which operations derive their origin are not all physical actions, but rather actions of the type of combining, ordering, separating and rearranging objects, that is, they are actions of a very general nature.
Third. An operation cannot exist by itself, but only within an ordered system of operations. And the orderliness, the organization of the system always takes the form of a “group” or “grouping”.
However, new symbolic actions are still closely connected with the specific objects with which the original physical actions were performed: the child mainly thinks about the action with physical objects, about their ordering, classification, etc. Hence the name - the period of specific operations.
When Piaget compares sensorimotor intelligence with the intelligence of the period of specific operations, he speaks of three main directions in which the latter reveals superiority over the former.
First. Sensorimotor intelligence is more static, less mobile. He considers things one after another, without linking them into a single picture.
Second. Sensorimotor intelligence is aimed only at practical success. In operational thinking, explanation and understanding are much more interesting. This change is associated with the development of consciousness, which leads to a better understanding of the ways to achieve goals.
Third. Since sensorimotor intelligence is limited to real actions performed with real objects, it is limited to narrow spatio-temporal boundaries. Symbolic actions have a wider scope of application.
Formal Operations Stage(from 12 years old) is characterized by the ability to operate with abstract concepts. At this stage, teenagers can explore all the logical options for solving a problem, imagine things that contradict facts, think realistically about the future, form ideals, and understand the meaning of metaphors that are inaccessible to young children. Formal-operational thinking no longer requires a connection with physical objects or actual events. It allows teenagers to ask themselves for the first time the question: “What will happen if ..?” (“What if I said that to that person?”). It allows them to “get into the minds” of other people and take into account their roles and ideals.
Is it possible to accelerate the change of stages of development and, for example, to teach a capable five-year-old child to specific operations? Piaget called this question "American" because it was asked whenever he visited the United States. He replied that, even if it were possible, in the long run the value of such an acceleration of development is very doubtful. He emphasized that it was important not to hasten the change of stages, but to provide each child with a sufficient amount of educational materials corresponding to each stage of his growth, so that no area of \u200b\u200bthe intellect remains underdeveloped. In his writings, J. Piaget often analyzed the relationship between "development" and "learning". "Learning" for him is by no means synonymous with "development". Rather, he is inclined to equate "learning" with the mastery of knowledge coming from some external source, i.e., he contrasts it with mastery, which is a consequence of a person's own activity. Thus, if a child is able to remember the correct answer, either because it was given to him, or because he received a reward for guessing this answer himself, then he undoubtedly learns. But Piaget is convinced that in this case there is no fundamental development, since the latter is carried out through active construction and self-regulation.
J. Piaget argued that there are no gaps in the transition from the simplest types of adaptive behavior to the most highly developed forms of intelligence. One grows out of the other. Therefore, even in the case when the intellect is developed to such an extent that it is capable of using extremely abstract knowledge, the origins of this knowledge should be sought in action.
Piaget repeated many times: knowledge does not come to us from the outside “in finished form”. It is not a "copy" of reality, because it is not only a matter of receiving impressions, as if our brain were a photographic plate. Knowledge is also not something that we receive at birth. We must build it.
According to Piaget, the process of development of the intellect proceeds as follows: schemes are organized into operations, various combinations of which correspond to qualitatively different stages of cognitive growth. As humans evolve, they use increasingly complex schemas to organize information and understand the outside world.
According to Piaget, four discrete, qualitatively different stages or periods can be distinguished in this development. He gave these periods the following names: sensorimotor stage (from birth to 1.5-2 years), preoperative stage (from 2 to 7 years - sometimes it is considered as the first phase of the concrete operations stage), stage concrete operations (from 7 to 12 years) and stage formal operations (beginning at age 12 and older).
|
stages |
Age |
characteristic behavior |
|
|
sensorimotor |
From birth to 1.5-2 years |
Babies learn about the world only through various actions: looking, grasping, sucking, biting, chewing, etc. |
|
|
Preoperational |
2 to 7 years old |
Young children form concepts and use symbols, such as language, to communicate them to those around them. These concepts are limited to their personal (egocentric), direct experience. In the pre-operational stage, children have very limited, sometimes "magical" ideas about causes and effects and experience significant difficulties in classifying objects or events. |
|
|
specific operations |
From 7 to 11-12 years old |
Children begin to think logically, classify objects according to several criteria and operate with mathematical concepts (provided that these operations are applied to specific objects or events). At the stage of concrete operations, children reach an understanding of conservation |
|
|
Formal operations |
From 12 or a little later |
Adolescents are able to analyze the solution of logical problems of both concrete and abstract content: they can systematically think about all the possibilities, plan for the future or recall the past, and also reason by analogy and metaphor |
|
Objecting to Piaget , E. Bleiler showed that autistic function is not primary either in ontogenesis or in phylogenesis (“the psychology of animals knows only the real function”), it arises relatively late and subsequently develops along with realistic thinking. However, in many children after the age of 2 years, autistic thinking plays a leading role. Bleuler explains this by the fact that, on the one hand, the development of speech provides favorable conditions for the development of such thinking, and, on the other hand, autism is a fertile ground for the exercise of thinking ability. Bleuler also argues that autistic thought can be not only unconscious, but also conscious, and one of its forms differs from the other "by its greater or lesser proximity to reality." That is, autistic thinking, first of all, is characterized not by its unconsciousness, but by the fact that it operates exclusively with what surrounds the child and what he encounters. Autistic thinking gives rise to nonsense only in the case of a dream or an illness, due to their isolation from reality.
Piaget divides all the conversations of children into two groups:
egocentric speech, in which the child talks to himself without addressing anyone, Piaget considers it a by-product of children's activity (Vygotsky calls such speech the verbal accompaniment of children's activity). Most of the statements of a child up to 6–7 years old are egocentric, as the child grows, its coefficient gradually falls and approaches zero by 7–8 years;
socialized speech with which the child addresses others: asks, demands, asks questions, etc.
Vygotsky An experimental and clinical study was undertaken to clarify the fate and function of children's egocentric speech.
The experimenters artificially caused various difficulties in children's activity, and under these conditions the coefficient of egocentric speech in children doubled in comparison with normal conditions. That is, the study found that the child's egocentric speech plays a specific significant role in his activities. The appearance of speech accompanying an activity always testifies to the awareness of this activity; such speech is a means of thinking that plans and directs future activity. Those. egocentric speech, most likely, is a transitional stage from external to internal speech, and it does not die off by school age, as Piaget believed, but passes into an internal form. Silent thinking processes are thus functionally equivalent to egocentric speech. Vygotsky points out that egocentric speech can perform the functions of realistic thinking, i.e. egocentric speech does not always indicate the egocentric nature of thinking.
Vygotsky considers any speech of a child to be social.(it is such in its origin), he divides it into egocentric and communicative. Egocentric speech arises by transferring the social forms of collective cooperation to the sphere of personal mental functions by the child. This happens when the child begins to talk to himself in the same way that he talked to others, when he begins to think out loud. Thus, egocentric speech is internal in its mental function and external in its physiological nature. The process of formation of inner speech is accomplished by dividing the functions of speech, by isolating egocentric speech, its gradual reduction and transformation into inner speech. The traditional theory of the origin of inner speech assumes the following sequence of its occurrence: external speech - whisper - inner speech.
Piaget's theory: extraverbal autistic thinking - egocentric thinking and speech - socialized speech and logical thinking.
Vygotsky believes that the movement of the process of development of children's thinking does not proceed from the individual to the social (psychoanalysis and Piaget), but, on the contrary, from social to individual.
The assumption about the primacy of the autistic form of thinking is untenable from a biological point of view.
Egocentric speech does not always indicate the egocentric nature of the child's thinking. It is not a by-product of the child's activity, but an important transitional stage in the development of inner speech.
The syncretism of children's thinking, which Piaget considered a consequence of egocentrism, Vygotsky explains by the fact that a child can think coherently and logically only about those things that are available to his direct experience; when a child is asked about things that are not yet available to his experience, he gives a syncretic answer.
J. Piaget was a staunch supporter of the idea of discrete development. According to him, the child's intellect in its development goes through four qualitatively different stages:
- 1. Sensorimotor stage (from 0 to 18 months).
- 2. Preoperative stage (from 18 months to 7 years).
- 3. The stage of specific operations (from 7 to 12 years).
- 4. The stage of formal operations (from 12 years of age and older).
The transition from one stage to another is associated with a radical reorganization of the ways of structuring or restructuring and interpreting information about the surrounding world. Passing from one stage of development to another, the child begins to understand the environment in a qualitatively different way.
J. Piaget argued that the sequence of stages is unchanged. Every normally developing child goes through the stages in a very definite order. None of the children can skip the stage of concrete operations, passing from the pre-operational stage directly to the stage of formal operations. Each stage, according to J. Piaget, is based on the achievements of the previous one and stems from them. At each stage, new cognitive skills are added to what has already been achieved, contributing to better adaptation to the environment.
Despite the fact that the order of passing through the stages is unchanged, there are individual differences in overcoming them. Therefore, the age indicated for each stage is approximate or average. Some children reach a certain stage relatively early, others much later.
sensorimotor stage. Cognitive development at the sensorimotor stage is based primarily on sensory experience and motor activity. Starting from the stage when reflexes predominate, the infant goes through 6 stages, during which the behavior becomes more flexible and purposeful.
preoperative stage. The transition from the sensorimotor to the preoperative stage occurs, but J. Piaget, usually between the 18th month and the 2nd year of life. Its distinguishing feature is the child's ability to think about objects and events that are not present at the moment. A child at this stage is able to mentally represent missing objects in the form of pictures, sounds, images, words, and in other forms. The acquisition of this new ability allows children to go beyond the current situation, to realize that objects exist even if they are not in sight.
The demonstration of delayed imitation, for example, the imitation by children of the behavior that they had observed some time before, J. Piaget considered evidence of the formation of this skill. Children at this stage are already able to look for hidden things even after some time. Thus, they demonstrate the presence of both a mental image of an object and ideas about its location. These children are characterized by the appearance of symbolic games, where the usual thing is to replace one object with another. The most important area of active use of symbols is the process of intensive expansion of vocabulary.
Stage of specific operations. The child enters the stage of concrete operations at about the age of 6-8 years. One of the main achievements that characterizes this stage is the ability to apply flexible and fully reversible operations. J. Piaget argued that many tasks are solved at the level of specific operations.
Awareness of maintaining the same amount of matter after its transformation, for example, the awareness that the amount of clay has not changed after the clay ball is rolled out.
The ability to arrange objects according to a certain attribute (seriation) appears, for example, ranking sticks by length, from the shortest to the longest.
The ability to assign objects to categories appears.
Stage of formal operations. The stage of formal operations is characterized by the highest level of cognitive development. It begins, according to J. Piaget, at about 12 years old and covers all subsequent periods of life.
If at the previous stage (concrete operations) children are limited by the situation "here and now" and freely think only about directly observed material things, and experience difficulties with abstractions and assumptions, then at the stage of formal operations the child develops the ability to reason both about current situations and and hypothetical problems. He turns out to be able to think both about the probable state of affairs and about the existing state of affairs, about what could be if ...
The concept of J. Piaget is an outstanding achievement of scientific thought, which had a significant impact on educational psychology. However, the studies of some of his students called into question a number of the hypotheses he had expressed. For example, the study by M. Donaldson cast doubt on the nature of the description of children's egocentrism in solving problems. Modern research also forces one to hesitate in a number of theoretical positions, for example, many consider J. Piaget's excessive focus on the actions of an infant, on the "motor" component of the sensorimotor period. Babies learn through sensation and observation as much as they do through action. But something else is obvious, that after the works of J. Piaget, educational psychology has become different.
The process of development of the intellect is a change of three large periods, during which the formation of the three main intellectual structures takes place (see the simplified diagram given in the table). First, sensory-motor structures are formed - systems of successively performed material actions. Then structures of specific operations arise - systems of actions performed in the mind, but based on external, visual data. Even later, the formation of formal-logical operations takes place. The main criterion is intelligence.
From 0 to 1.5-2 years - sensorimotor stage. The child begins to separate himself from the outside world, there is an understanding of the constancy, stability of external objects. At this time, speech is not developed and there are no ideas, and behavior is based on the coordination of perception and movement (hence the name "sensory-motor").
From 2 to 7 years, the pre-operational stage is thinking with the help of representations. A strong figurative beginning with insufficient development of verbal thinking leads to a kind of childish logic. At the stage of preoperative representations, the child is not capable of proof, reasoning. Thinking is guided by the external signs of the subject. The child does not see things in their internal relations, he considers them as they are given by direct perception. (He thinks the wind is blowing because the trees are swaying).
From 7 to 12 years, the stage of concrete operations is the emergence of elementary logical reasoning.
From 12 years old - the stage of formal operations - the formation of the ability to think logically, use abstract concepts, perform operations in the mind.
By the 1st year of life, the child becomes more independent. At this age, children are already getting up on their own, learning to walk. The ability to move without the help of an adult gives the child a sense of freedom and independence. During this period, children are very active, they master what was not available to them before. The desire to be independent from an adult can also manifest itself in the child's negative behavior. Having felt freedom, children do not want to part with this feeling and obey adults. Now the child himself chooses the type of activity. When an adult refuses, a child may show negativism: scream, cry, etc. Such manifestations are called the crisis of the 1st year of life, which was studied by S. Yu. Meshcheryakova. Based on the results of a survey of parents, S. Yu. Meshcheryakova concluded that all these processes are temporary and transient. She divided them into 5 subgroups: 1) difficult to educate - the child is stubborn, does not want to obey the demands of adults, shows perseverance and desire for constant parental attention; 2) the child has many forms of communication that were previously unusual for him. They can be positive and negative. The child violates routine moments, he develops new skills; 3) the child is very vulnerable and can show strong emotional reactions to the condemnation and punishment of adults; 4) the child, when faced with difficulties, may contradict himself. If something does not work out, the child calls on an adult to help him, but immediately refuses the help offered to him; 5) the child can be very capricious. The crisis of the 1st year of life affects the life of the child as a whole. The areas affected by this period are the following: objective activity, the child's relationship with adults, the child's attitude towards himself. In objective activity, the child becomes more independent, he becomes more interested in various objects, he manipulates and plays with them. The child strives to be independent and independent, he wants to do everything himself, despite the fact that he lacks skills. In relation to adults, the child becomes more demanding, he may show aggression towards loved ones. Strangers cause him distrust, the child becomes selective in communication and may refuse contact with a stranger. The child's attitude towards himself also undergoes changes. The child becomes more self-reliant and independent and wants adults to recognize this, allowing him to act in accordance with his own desires. The child is often offended and protests when parents demand submission from him, not wanting to fulfill his whims.
Crisis 1 year
This crisis is a transition period between infancy and early childhood.
The child begins to actively walk, crawl, the development of the surrounding space takes place. Since not all the desires of the child are feasible, he often has to hear the word “no”, which can cause a strong emotional reaction, a protest. This is the negative manifestation of the crisis. The task of parents during this period is to give the child a certain amount of independence, to be more patient and self-possessed, and most importantly consistent - to try to exclude situations where something is impossible today, but tomorrow it is possible, etc.
The main neoplasm is children's or autonomous speech. This speech differs from the adult in sound and meaning, and is often understood only by the closest people who are with the child all the time.
By the age of three, the child has a great desire for independence, which is expressed in the persistent "I myself" and "I want." In an effort to be like an adult, the child wants to perform the activities that he observes in adults (turn on the light, go to the store, cook dinner, and so on). Of course, the claims of children unreasonably exceed their real possibilities and it is impossible to satisfy all of them. However, insufficient consideration of this need for independence, and even more so its direct suppression, can be the cause of frustration and increased nervousness in the child. It was during this period that for the first time the child began to notice manifestations of stubbornness and negativism directed against adults who constantly look after him and patronize him. Sometimes you can see that the child, as it were, is looking for reasons where he could oppose himself to adults. For example, Mitya (2 years 7 months) comes up to the stove and says to himself: "Mitya, you can't touch the stove!" and after that: "And I will! And I will!" (Obukhova L.F., 1995).
Outwardly, the crisis of three years is manifested by several important symptoms, which were first described by Else Köhler in her work "On the personality of a three-year-old child." L.S. Vygotsky designates them as the "seven-star symptoms" of this critical age period.
1. Negativism - a negative reaction and refusal to perform
certain requirements of adults. It should not be confused with the
shaniya, which happens at an earlier age.
2. Stubbornness - a reaction to one's own decision, which
is the insistence on its fulfillment. Stubbornness
should not be confused with persistence, since here on the first
3. Obstinacy - the reaction is more generalized and impersonal
naya than the previous ones. This is a protest against the orders that exist
live at home.
4. Self-will - a reaction of emancipation from an adult, that is
striving to defend their rights to independence intentionally
niya, design and independence from it.
5. Devaluation of adults - expressed in frequent statements
yah to an adult that he is a "fool" or "drunkard", and at the same time
it does not matter at all that his parent is smart and completely
doesn't drink wine.
6. Protest rebellion - manifested in frequent quarrels with parents,
which acquire the features of protest, a kind of "war" with
adults.
7. The desire for despotism - manifested in the desire for power
to control and control the behavior of adults, and for this purpose
many ways. Most common in families with
natural child.
Crisis 3 years
It is considered one of the most difficult and turning points in a child's life. It is associated with an increase in the independence and activity of the child. Just like in the case of the crisis of 1 year, a lot depends on the tolerance and flexibility of the parents.
If the relationship with the child does not develop, the initiative is not encouraged, the child is not given enough independence, which he requires, then directly crisis manifestations appear.
These include:
negativism - the child does not do something because he was asked to do so, especially by adults.
stubbornness is the reaction of a child who insists on something not because he really wants it, but because he himself told adults about it and demands that his opinion be taken into account.
obstinacy. It is directed against the entire system of relations that developed in early childhood, against the norms of upbringing adopted in the family.
There may also be a depreciation of what used to be familiar and dear to the child. There is a tendency to independence, to express one's opinion.
The result of the crisis of 3 years is that the child learns to act independently, can manipulate objects, and mastery of speech also occurs - the child begins to actively speak and understand what he is told.
At this age stage, the support of an adult is very important, the child should be praised for his achievements, and also point out shortcomings very gently, since at this age the child reacts very sharply to criticism.
QUESTION 11Preschool childhood (from 3 years old to 6-7 years old) is often divided into three periods: younger preschool age (3-4 years old), middle preschool age (4-5 years old) and senior preschool age (over 5 years old).
Preschool age is characterized by the intensity of games as the leading activity of a preschooler. It is in the game that the child goes beyond the limits of his family world and establishes relationships with the world of adults. Children's games go through a rather significant development path: from subject-manipulative games to plot-role-playing games with rules and symbolic games.
Crisis 7 years
This crisis is associated with entering school, changing the role of the child, as well as changing the main activity - instead of playing, the main activity for him is learning. Authoritative figures are changing: if earlier the parent was the most authoritative figure for the child, now there is also a teacher, whose opinion is sometimes even more important than the opinion of the parents.
The main neoplasms of the crisis of 7 years is the appearance of pride and self-esteem, most often inadequate. A child's self-esteem depends on his achievements or failures in school life and can be either overestimated or underestimated. This is due to the formation of a complex of experiences of failure, or self-importance. The child begins to experience emotions and experiences unknown to him until now, he has new goals and desires. There is also a loss of childish immediacy - the child thinks before acting, can hide his experiences, tries not to show them to others.
Game as a leading activity of preschool age. Other child activities
The game is the leading activity of a preschool child. The subject of gaming activity is an adult as a carrier of certain social functions, entering into certain relationships with other people, using certain rules in his activities. The main change in behavior is that the desires of the child fade into the background, and the clear implementation of the rules of the game comes to the fore.
The structure of the role-playing game: Each game has its own game conditions - children participating in it, dolls, other toys and objects.
The plot is that sphere of reality that is reflected in the game. At first, the child is limited by the framework of the family, and therefore his games are mainly connected with family, everyday problems. Then, as he masters new areas of life, he begins to use more complex plots - industrial, military, etc.
In addition, the game on the same plot gradually becomes more stable, longer. If at 3-4 years old a child can devote only 10-15 minutes to it, and then he needs to switch to something else, then at 4-5 years old one game can already last 40-50 minutes. Older preschoolers are able to play the same game for several hours in a row, and some of their games stretch over several days.
Role (main, secondary);
Toys, play material;
Game actions (those moments in the activities and relationships of adults that are reproduced by the child)
Younger preschoolers imitate objective activities - cut bread, rub carrots, wash dishes. They are absorbed in the very process of performing actions and sometimes forget about the result - for what and for whom they did it.
For middle preschoolers, the main thing is the relationship between people, they perform game actions not for the sake of the actions themselves, but for the sake of the relationships behind them. Therefore, a 5-year-old child will never forget to put "sliced" bread in front of the dolls and will never mix up the sequence of actions - first dinner, then washing dishes, and not vice versa.
For older preschoolers, it is important to obey the rules arising from the role, and the correct implementation of these rules is strictly controlled by them. Game actions are gradually losing their original meaning. Actually objective actions are reduced and generalized, and sometimes they are generally replaced by speech ("Well, I washed their hands. Let's sit down at the table!").
There are 2 main phases or stages in the development of the game. The first stage (3-5 years) is characterized by the reproduction of the logic of people's real actions; the content of the game are objective actions. At the second stage (5-7 years), real relations between people are modeled, and the content of the game becomes social relations, the social meaning of the activity of an adult.
The role of play in the development of the child's psyche.
1) In the game, the child learns to fully communicate with peers.
2) Learn to subordinate your impulsive desires to the rules of the game. There is a subordination of motives - "I want" begins to obey "it is impossible" or "it is necessary".
3) In the game, all mental processes develop intensively, the first moral feelings (what is bad and what is good) are formed.
4) New motives and needs are formed (competitive, game motives, the need for independence).
5) New types of productive activities are born in the game (drawing, modeling, appliqué)
3. Development of mental functions in preschool age
Stages are steps, or levels, of development that successively change each other. At each level, a relatively stable equilibrium is reached, which is then disturbed again. The process of development of intellect is a change of three large periods, during which the formation of three main intellectual structures takes place (see the simplified diagram given in Table 1). First, sensory-motor structures are formed - systems of successively performed material actions. Then structures of specific operations arise - systems of actions performed in the mind, but based on external, visual data. Even later, the formation of formal-logical operations takes place.
Formal logic, according to J. Piaget, is the highest stage in the development of the intellect. The intellectual development of a child is a transition from lower to higher stages. Thus, concrete operations serve as the basis of formal operations and form part of them. In development, there is not a simple replacement of the lower stage by the higher one, but the integration of previously formed structures; the previous stage is rebuilt at a higher level.
The order of the stages is unchanged. From this we can assume that it is due to some biological factor associated with maturation. However, as Piaget emphasized, the sequence of stages does not contain any hereditary program. Maturation in the case of the stages of the intellect is reduced only to the discovery of the possibilities of development. These opportunities still need to be realized. It would be wrong, Piaget believed, to see in the sequence of these stages the product of innate predetermination, because in the process of development there is a continuous construction of the new.
The age at which equilibrium structures appear may vary depending on the physical or social environment. In free relationships and discussions, prelogical beliefs are quickly replaced by rational beliefs, but they last longer in relationships based on authority. According to Piaget, one can observe a decrease or increase in the average chronological age of the appearance of a particular stage, depending on the wealth or poverty of the activity of the child himself, his spontaneous experience, school or cultural environment. Speaking about the problem of age in development, Piaget emphasized the need for comparative studies to clarify the role of ethnic and cultural factors influencing development.
The sensorimotor period covers the first two years of a child's life. At this time, speech is not developed and there are no ideas, and behavior is based on the coordination of perception and movement (hence the name "sensory-motor").
Having been born, the child has congenital reflexes. Some of them, such as the sucking reflex, can change. After some exercise, the child sucks better than on the first day, then he begins to suck not only during meals, but also in between - his fingers, any objects that touch his mouth. This is the stage of reflex exercise. As a result of reflex exercises, the first skills are formed. At the second stage, the child turns his head in the direction of the noise, follows the movement of the object with his eyes, and tries to grab the toy. The skill is based on primary circular reactions - repetitive actions. The child repeats the same action over and over again (say, pulling the cord) for the sake of the process itself. Such actions are reinforced by the child's own activity, which gives him pleasure.
Secondary circular reactions appear in the third stage, when the child is no longer focused on his own activity, but on the changes caused by his actions. The action is repeated in order to prolong interesting impressions. The child shakes the rattle for a long time in order to prolong the sound that interests him, runs all the objects that are in his hands along the bars of the bed, etc.
The fourth stage is the beginning of practical intelligence. Action schemes formed at the previous stage are combined into a single whole and used to achieve the goal. When a random change in an action gives an unexpected effect - a new impression - the child repeats it and reinforces the new scheme of actions.
At the fifth stage, tertiary circular reactions appear: the child already deliberately changes actions in order to see what results this will lead to. He is actively experimenting.
At the sixth stage, the internalization of action schemes begins. If earlier the child performed various external actions in order to achieve the goal, tried and failed, now he can already combine the schemes of actions in his mind and suddenly come to the right decision. For example, a girl, holding objects in both hands, cannot open the door and, reaching for the doorknob, stops. She puts the items on the floor, but, noticing that the opening door will hit them, she shifts them to another place.
About two years, an internal action plan is being formed. This ends the sensorimotor period, and the child enters a new period - representative intelligence and concrete operations. Representational intelligence - thinking with the help of representations. A strong figurative beginning with insufficient development of verbal thinking leads to a kind of logic. At the stage of preoperational representations, the child is not capable of proof, reasoning. Piaget's so-called phenomena are a striking example of this.
The preschoolers were shown two clay balls and, making sure that the children considered them the same, they changed the shape of one ball before their eyes - they rolled it into a sausage. Answering the question whether the amount of clay in the ball and the sausage is the same, the children said that it was not the same: there is more in the sausage because it is longer. In a similar problem with the amount of liquid, the children evaluated the water poured into two glasses as the same. But when, in their presence, water was poured from one glass into another, narrower and higher, and the level of water in this vessel rose, they read that there was more water in it. The child does not have the principle of conservation of the amount of matter. He, without reasoning, focuses on the external, "striking" signs of objects.
The child does not see things in their internal relations, he considers them as they are given by direct perception. He thinks the wind is blowing because the trees are swaying, and the sun follows him all the time, stopping when he himself stops. J. Piaget called this phenomenon realism. The preschooler slowly, gradually moves from realism to objectivity, to taking into account other points of view and understanding the relativity of assessments. The latter is expressed, for example, in the fact that a child who considers all large things heavy and small things light, acquires a new idea: a small pebble, light for a child, turns out to be heavy for water and therefore sinks.
A child who has pre-operational ideas is also characterized by insensitivity to contradictions, a lack of connection between judgments, a transition from the particular to the particular, bypassing the general, a tendency to connect everything with everything, etc. This specificity of child logic, like realism, is due to the main feature of thinking child - his egocentrism. Egocentrism is a special intellectual position of the child. He considers the whole world from his own point of view, the only and absolute one, the understanding of the relativity of cognition of the world and the coordination of different points of view are inaccessible to him. The egocentric position of the child is well seen in the experiment with the model of mountains. Three mountains looked differently on different sides of the layout. The child saw this mountain landscape from one side and from several photographs he could choose the one that corresponded to his real point of view. But when asked to find a photograph with a view of the doll sitting opposite, he again chose "his" picture. He could not imagine that the doll had a different position, and she saw the layout differently.
This example is for preschoolers. But egocentrism is a common characteristic of children's thinking, manifesting itself in every period of development. Egocentrism intensifies when, in the course of development, the child encounters a new field of knowledge, and weakens as he gradually masters it. The ebb and flow of egocentrism corresponds to the sequence in which balance is disturbed and restored.
The stage of pre-operational representations ends with the emergence of an understanding of the conservation of the amount of matter, the fact that during transformations some properties of an object are preserved, while others change. Piaget's phenomena disappear, and children of 7-8 years old, solving Piaget's problems, give the correct answers. The stage of specific operations is associated with the ability to reason, prove, correlate different points of view. Logical operations, however, need to be based on visibility, they cannot be performed in a hypothetical plan (therefore they are called concrete). The system of operations that develops in a child by the age of about 11 prepares the ground for the formation of scientific concepts.
The last highest period of intellectual development is the period of formal operations. A teenager is freed from specific attachment to objects given in the field of perception, and acquires the ability to think in the same way as an adult. He regards propositions as hypotheses from which all sorts of consequences can be deduced; his thinking becomes hypothetical-deductive.
The stages of intellectual development, according to Piaget, can be considered as stages of mental development in general. Piaget studied different mental functions (memory, perception, affects) at each level of development, but considered all mental functions in their relation to the intellect. Unlike other classifications of the mental development of the child, the intellect was at the center of Piaget's systems. The development of other mental functions at all stages is subject to the intellect and is determined by it.
