Piaget’s Theory of Child De
elopment

Piaget’s Theory of Child Development thought and action. This is the process that Piaget
labeled equilibration. Contrarily to frequent, but too
Jean Piaget’s (1896–1980) theory counts as one of the simplistic interpretations, equilibration does not cor-
most influential and enduring theories of cognitive respond to a stable (even if only temporary) state of
development, and is firmly grounded in biology and equilibrium, but is the process of coordination in itself.
epistemology. Although the focus of this entry is on As a consequence of the functional continuity that
the child developmental aspect of his work, it is Piaget postulated between biological and psychologi-
therefore important to review some of the key epis- cal entities, a given level of knowledge is always
temological concepts that Piaget adopted. Unsolved considered to result from a reorganization of the
issues as well as present and future developments of preceding one. Reconstruction means more than a
Piaget’s theory are also briefly reviewed. mere addition of elements of a lower type in order to
attain a higher level, but implies a total reorganization
and a change in scale. One direct consequence of a
1. The Epistemology of Piaget constructivist perspective is that an epistemologist or a
psychologist studying any level of development will
Piaget, who trained as a biologist, had as a primary ask what characterized the preceding level and will
objective to understand the development of knowledge stress developmental progression towards higher
in the human species, rather than to understand why levels. An essential mechanism for this reconstruction
and how children develop. His first originality was to is reflecting abstraction, that is, a process by which the
address philosophical questions (such as the origin or subject extracts characteristics or coordinations from
the development of knowledge) by empirical means, in actions or operations; it is called ‘reflecting’ both
particular by relying on the study of child development because it consists of a mental reorganization and
(supposed to be, at the beginning of his career, a mere because it implies a reflection or a transfer onto a
‘detour’ of some years). He established the discipline higher level of what was established at a lower level.
of genetic epistemology (the term ‘genetic’ referring to Reflecting abstraction is contrasted with empirical or
the concept of genesis or evolution, as proposed by simple abstraction, which bears mainly on observable
Baldwin), with the aim ‘to study the roots of the characteristics of objects or classes of objects.
various sorts of knowledge from their most elementary
forms on and to follow their development in ulterior
levels including scientific thinking,’ and by grounding 2. The Psychology of Jean Piaget
it in both historico-critical and psychogenetic ap-
proaches. Piaget’s epistemology is constructivist, in Piaget’s psychology of intelligence is the most uni-
the sense that knowledge is neither a mere reflection of versally known part of his work, even though he
the external world (realism), nor a projection of himself did not consider it the main part (e.g., Piaget
pre-existing structures of the mind (nativism), and the 1947, 1970, Piaget and Inhelder 1966). His theory
origins of knowledge are to be found in the practical transformed the field of developmental psychology by
and cognitive activity of the subject. Piaget’s epis- providing it with a new vision of the development of
temology is also fundamentally interdisciplinary. the child, to the extent that almost every develop-
His primary hypothesis was that intelligence is a mental study has some connection with a question
form of biological adaptation (e.g., Piaget 1967), that Piaget raised. Intelligence is defined as the most general
is, intellectual or cognitive behaviors are the products form of coordination of the actions and operations
of an organism, in interaction with its environment, that characterize the various developmental levels,
and the end point of biological evolution. This is not to and not as a mental faculty or an entity in itself; it
say that psychological phenomena can be reduced to develops through a succession of general stages,
biological ones, as Piaget always opposed biological defined by overall structures (‘structures d’ensemble’).
reductionism; intelligence is an organizing activity Piaget was not interested in individual or task-specific
whose functioning transcends biological organization, performances, but in the generic behavior of subjects
by elaborating new structures. The main characteristic in classes of situations.
common to knowledge and to living organisms is their The successive stages or levels are general structures,
adaptive character. Adaptation itself, whether bio- which appear in a fixed order of succession, but are not
logical or cognitive, relies on two mechanisms, defined necessarily tied to a given age, and which are such that
very early in Piaget’s work, namely assimilation (in- a given structure n integrates, as a substructure, the
corporation of new information into an existing preceding structure nk1. The number of stages
system) and accommodation (modification of existing defined in Piaget’s publications varied from three to
schemes or structures by newly assimilated elements, five. Most often, he referred to four stages: (i) the
so as to respond to the demands of the environment). sensorimotor stage (approximately the first two years),
By so doing, actions and operations become coordin- itself consisting of six substages, or three periods, in
ated with one another; such coordinations define a which practical schemes develop, among which is the
new entity, which in turn constitutes a new object for scheme of object permanence (operationalized by the

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study of the search for hidden objects), one of the most more than lip-service to the first three factors, he spent
studied domains in present day infancy research; (ii) considerable time in demonstrating the necessity of
the preoperational stage from approximately 2 to 6 equilibration, which he considered to account for the
years of age, also labeled representative (prerelational ‘vection’ or direction of development (Piaget 1975).
and intuitive, or prelogical) period, made possible by Majoring equilibration (‘eT quilibration majorante’) is
the emergence and the development of the symbolic seen as the causal mechanism underlying the pro-
function; (iii) the concrete operational stage (7 to 12 gression of cognitive development. It is a dynamic
years) during which invariants (conservation), logical sequence of states of disequilibrium–equilibrium and
classes and relations, the concept of number, as well as embodies the organism’s strive toward a more general
different concepts of space develop, all of which are equilibrium. Equilibration is the only mechanism,
marked by reversibility; and (iv) the formal operational according to Piaget, that can account for the emerg-
stage, during which adolescents develop hypothetico- ence of novel behavior, even though more recent work
deductive reasoning (i.e., beyond concrete objects and has disputed the idea that Piaget’s theory can really
actions), and experimental schemata. Piaget used account for the emergence of novel behaviors. Cog-
abstract algebra to formalize the underlying struc- nitive structures are put into disequilibrium by pertur-
tures: a group of displacements for the sensorimotor bations which resist the assimilatory process and lead
stage, groupings for the concrete operational stage, to errors or failures of action. Re-equilibration is made
and a group of four operations (INRC group) for the possible by regulations, which entail the modification
formal operational stage. He also attempted to for- of an action as a function of feedback regarding its
malize the pre-operational stage by means of the logic previous outcomes, ultimately leading to compensa-
of functions. Other cognitive activities such as mental tory reconstructions. Equilibration is thus necessary
imagery, perception, memory, and language were when contradictions and cognitive conflicts arise,
always dealt with by Piaget in relation to the de- hence the importance given by Piaget to cognitive
velopment of operational structures. They were conflict as a source of cognitive development.
termed ‘figurative’ because they attempt to represent
reality as it appears. Figurative activities are con-
trasted with (and subordinated to) ‘operative’ ac-
tivities which attempt to transform reality (e.g., Piaget 4. Unsol
ed Issues in the Piagetian Theory
and Inhelder 1966b).
Although Piaget grew less and less interested in the Piagetian theory has been subjected to numerous
description of these general stages, this is probably the criticisms (probably proportional to his production)
feature of his theory that has been most often retained on the part of developmental psychologists, only some
and criticized. In particular, the generality of the of which are summarized here; most critics addressed,
stages was questioned by the existence of ‘decalages,’ however, only isolated elements of the theory or failed
that is, temporal lags between acquisition of concepts to take into account the fact that Piaget’s project was
supposed to pertain to the same level. Readers of essentially epistemological. First, numerous decalages,
Piaget have often overestimated the necessity of which could not be predicted by the theory, have been
synchronism in acquisitions across situations as im- observed between concepts supposed to belong to the
plied by the theory. It should be stressed that Piaget same structural level; between-task correlations are
did not postulate that the generality of structures relatively low, implying that all tasks do not measure
meant strict synchronism, even though some of his the same construct. This led a number of researchers
writings were admittedly ambiguous with respect to to claim that development is domain specific. More-
this issue (e.g., Chapman 1988). over, the concept of overall logico-mathematical
structure proved very difficult to operationalize. Se-
cond, Piaget’s portrait of the child appeared too
universal and focused on the subject, independently of
3. Factors of De
elopment his\her cultural environment. Third, the theory placed
too much emphasis on the development of logico-
Piaget described four factors of development: (i) mathematical thinking, as contrasted with other forms
organic growth, and maturation of the nervous and of thinking. Fourth, Piagetian theory did not provide
endocrine systems; (ii) experience, which Piaget fur- sufficient information on learning mechanisms and on
ther decomposed into a factor of physical experience the effects of training. Consistent with his epistemo-
(actions exerted upon objects in order to extract their logical project, Piaget was indeed interested in dem-
properties by simple abstraction) and a factor of onstrating the commonalities, in terms of general
logico-mathematical experience (extraction of know- mechanisms, between learning and development
ledge by reflecting upon actions, whether effective or rather than in focusing on the specificities of learning.
mental); (iii) social interactions and transmission; and Linked to this is the difficulty for the Piagetian theory
(iv) equilibration. This last factor was undoubtedly the to account for the appearance of novel behaviors.
most important for Piaget; whereas he often paid little Finally, like many other, general psychological

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elopment

theories, Piaget did not take into consideration in- were very productive, because they produced data that
dividual differences; however, it has been shown that were both counterintuitive and generative of hypoth-
the variability in performance, whether intra- or inter- eses about the way children think.
individual, is much larger than could at first be
suspected and constitutes a fundamental phenomenon
rather than mere noise. 6. Beyond Piaget’s Theory
As mentioned in the previous section, the Piagetian
5. The Heritage of Piaget theory is still very active, not only in developmental
psychology, but in neighboring fields too; many
Despite the criticisms addressed to the theory, Piaget’s researchers around the world continue working with
theory leaves an enormous heritage, some of which is Piagetian tasks, even if they do not always acknowl-
no longer even acknowledged, because it has been edge it, or even know it. Also from an empirical
incorporated into developmental psychology, almost perspective, a flourishing new direction, which is very
as truisms. First, the constructivist view of devel- much in the spirit of Piaget’s theory, is that of the
opment that Piaget defended is presently widely held ‘theory of mind.’ From a theoretical point of view, the
by cognitive developmentalists, as well as by edu- core part of the theory has been retained while giving
cational and cognitive psychologists. Likewise, the rise to new developments, as should be the case with
concepts of assimilation and accommodation, even any sound theory. Only some concepts were really
though probably too general, are adopted by a large abandoned, the best example of which is the logiciz-
number of theoreticians. The view of children as active ation of overall structures. Without pretending to be
thinkers has also been generally adopted. Second, exhaustive, two directions, at present, appear to be
although there was a period in the 1960s and 1970s very close to Piaget’s proposals, and promising for the
during which a large number of developmental re- future, namely the neo-Piagetian models, and the
searchers argued for domain specificity in develop- application of dynamic systems modeling to devel-
ment and against the existence of general stages, there opmental psychology.
is a growing consensus that the characterization of The objective of the neo-Piagetian models, initiated
human cognitive development needs something more by Pascaul-Leone and exemplified by scholars such as
general than a long list of specific concepts, even if less Robbie Case, Kurt Fischer, Graeme Halford, and
general than the cognitive structures defined by Piaget. Robert Siegler (e.g., Case 1992, Case and Edelstein
In any case, most developmentalists see the need for 1993, Pascual-Leone 1987) was to provide a response
structural analyses that transcend any particular cog- to some of the questions left open in Piagetian theory,
nitive task. Similarly, the concept of scheme (defined while preserving most of its core postulates. These
as an invariant abstracted across several actions, to models have in common the search for isomorphisms
which new actions or objects can be assimilated and or invariants across different classes of situations. As a
which allows for generalizations) has been retained consequence, they have maintained or rehabilitated
and is close to other concepts such as schemas or (after the emphasis on domain specificity mentioned
scripts proposed in cognitive psychology. Third, al- above) the notion of general stage; however, the
though the construct of equilibration has been crit- structuralist features are quite different from those
icized for being too fuzzy, similar conceptualizations postulated by Piaget. First, the hypothesis of a unique,
are now being proposed, whether by dynamic systems general, logical structure underlying the organization
theoreticians, or by neo-Piagetians. of all behaviors at a given moment of development was
Last, but not least, Piaget contributed enormously abandoned, and replaced by more local ones, thereby
to the research methods used in developmental psy- granting more importance to context. Second, isomor-
chology, even though he was criticized for not using a phisms across domains are considered to result from
standard, quantifiable methodology. He pioneered the common constraints or ‘strictures’ rather than from a
use of a clinical method (later to be called critical common structure: general limits in processing re-
method), in which the researcher probes for the child’s sources or attentional capacity impose a ceiling on
understanding through repeated questioning. Piaget cognitive performances while allowing for situational
insisted that the child’s incorrect responses reflect a and individual variability. Third, the importance given
complex, underlying cognitive system, and should not to context has as corollary a much stronger emphasis
be merely recorded as failures. Also, Piaget’s work was on task analysis, that is, on an analysis of the
and still is a source of very ingenious empirical characteristics of external situations together with an
techniques, in many different fields; Piagetian mea- analysis of the strategies that children adopt when
sures such as conservation, class inclusion, spatial confronted with these situations and of the processing
representation, perspective taking, object permanence, load that these strategies entail. The challenge now is
moral judgment, transitive inference, and many to understand under which conditions characteristic
others, have each produced countless studies by forms of reasoning are most likely to emerge, and why
researchers around the world. Most of these tasks they do not despite the presence of sufficient general

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elopment and Education

resources. Fourth, some neo-Piagetians also assign a Pascual-Leone J 1987 Organismic processes for neo-Piagetian
more fundamental status to individual differences; theories: A dialectical causal account of cognitive develop-
consequently, they claim that there may exist different ment. International Journal of Psychology 22: 531–70
developmental paths for different types of subjects. Piaget J 1947 La Psychologie de L’intelligence. Colin, Paris. [1950
The Psychology of Intelligence. Routledge & Paul, London]
This implies that development is no longer led by a
Piaget J 1967 Biologie et Connaissance. Gallimard, Paris. [1971
single, dominant general mechanism such as equi- Biology and Knowledge. University of Chicago Press, Chicago]
libration, but that several general mechanisms may Piaget J 1970 Piaget’s theory. In: Mussen P H (ed.) Carmichael’s
interact to produce development, leading to a pos- Manual of Child Psychology, 3rd edn., Vol. 1. Wiley, New
tulate of multidimensionality and multidirectionality York [Reprinted in Mussen P H 1983 Handbook of Child
in development (Reuchlin et al. 1990; Rieben et al. Psychology, Vol. I. Wiley, New York]
1990). Such a postulate has long been adopted by life- Piaget J 1975 L’eT quilibration des Structures Cogniti
es. Presses
span developmentalists (e.g., Baltes et al. 1998), but universitaires de France, Paris. [1977 The De
elopment of
took longer to be envisioned by child developmen- Thought: Equilibration of Cogniti
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talists. New York]
A new, promising way of theorization is provided Piaget J, Inhelder B 1966 La Psychologie de L’enfant 2nd edn.
Presses universitaires de France, Paris. [1969 The Psychology
by nonlinear dynamic systems theories. Such models
of the Child. Basic Books, New York]
can be used to detect, and then model, developmental Piaget J, Inhelder B 1966b L’image Mentale Chez L’enfant.
transitions, that is, changes from one stable mode to Presses universitaires de France, Paris. [1971 Mental Imagery
another one. The emphasis is on self-organization, in the Child. Routledge & Paul, London]
which can be linked to Piaget’s concept of equi- Reuchlin M, Lautrey J, Marendaz C, Ohlmann T (Eds.) 1990
libration. Although some scholars have begun to use Cognition: l’indi
iduel et l’uni
erse. Presses universitaires de
nonlinear dynamics to build specific models of pro- France, Paris
cesses of development, particularly in the field of Rieben L, de Ribaupierre A, Lautrey J 1990 Structural invariants
motor development or in conservation tasks (e.g., and individual modes of processing: On the necessity of a
Thelen and Smith 1994, Van Geert 1994), these are minimally structuralist approach of development for edu-
only the preliminaries, and are still to be taken as cation. Archi
es de Psychologie 58: 29–53
metaphors; moreover, they require heavy methodol- Thelen E, Smith L B 1994 A Dynamic Systems Approach to the
De
elopment of Cognition and Action. MIT Press, Cambridge,
ogical designs. Nevertheless, such attempts, which MA
may help uncover discontinuities, i.e. stages, under Van Geert P 1994 Dynamic Systems of De
elopment. Harvester
what appears to be continuous change, could help Wheatsheaf, New York
bring explicit modeling into developmental psy-
chology. A. de Ribaupierre

See also: Cognitive Development in Childhood and Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.
Adolescence; Developmental Psychology; Infant and All rights reserved.
Child Development, Theories of; Infant Development:
Physical and Social Cognition; Lifespan Theories of
Cognitive Development; Piaget, Jean (1896–1980); Piaget’s Theory of Human Development
Piaget’s Theory of Human Development and Edu-
cation; Theory of Mind and Education

1. Introduction
The life and work of Jean Piaget are one: his work was
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International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences ISBN: 0-08-043076-7