The Origins of Intelligence in Children - Jean Piaget (Margaret Cook, translator)

April 27, 2022

Article Abstract

This work, a second edition of which has very kindly been requested, was followed by La Construction du réel chez l’enfant and was to have been completed by a study of the genesis of imitation in the child. The latter piece of research, whose publication we have postponed because it is so closely connected with the analysis of play and representational symbolism, appeared in 1945, inserted in a third work, La formation du symbole chez l’enfant. Together these three works form one entity dedicated to the beginnings of intelligence, that is to say, to the various manifestations of sensorimotor intelligence and to the most elementary forms of expression. The theses developed in this volume, which concern in particular the formation of the sensorimotor schemata and the mechanism of mental assimilation, have given rise to much discussion which pleases us and prompts us to thank both our opponents and our sympathizers for their kind interest in our work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

MARIO Connections

Piaget’s introduction of the term “schema” and discussion of how children assimilate new information, from the earliest of stages primarily through the sensorimotor system, has influenced MARIO’s conception of the developmental continuum of learning. This continuum is embedded within the structure of both the elementary and secondary frameworks.