67 TEACHING by J. PIAZHE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE

The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget studied intelligence in terms of the structural-genetic approach. Jean Piaget created the most profound doctrine of intelligence. He built his research at the junction of several psychological trends: behaviorism (the reaction was replaced by an operation), Gestalt psychology, and the teachings of P. Jean (the principle of interiorisation was borrowed). The intellectual development of the child, according to Piaget, was based on the development of his speech and thinking. From this it was concluded that, up to a certain age, the child’s reasoning is egocentric in nature, while the adult thinks socially. J. Piaget was the first to propose to investigate not what the child thinks, but how he thinks. The intellect of a healthy full-fledged person can not collapse, just the transition to a higher level of development contributes to the emergence of new ways of learning and processing information. According to J. Piaget, a more mature intellect has a complicated development pattern.

J. Piaget put forward the version that self-centeredness characteristic of a child is overcome in the process of its socialization. On the basis of this, one can speak of the internalization of external actions, that is, the thinking out of one’s actions. He singled out 4 basic stages of the development of intelligence.

I. Sensomotor stage (from birth to 1.5–2 years).

Ii. Preoperative stage (from 2 to 7 years).

Iii. Stage of specific operations (from 7 to 11–12 years).

Iv. Stage of formal operations (from 12 years to the end of life).

Each stage has its own characteristics and features.

Stage I - information flows through the senses (“by touch”).

Stage II is different in that as the child grows older, the child begins to speak, the main symbol is now a word, each object has its own characteristic (color, shape), children's egocentrism appears.

Stage III - logical thinking appears, the ability of classification and generalization appears.

Stage IV is characterized by some past experience on which a person relies, decision making becomes logical, the formation of abstract thinking.

J. Piaget considered intelligence to be a living biological structure, thanks to which a person is able to perceive certain knowledge at each stage of his development, it is a kind of process of adaptation to the outside world. The development of a person largely depends on his activity. J. Piaget was the first of scientists who abandoned the quantitative measurement of intelligence. He compared the structure of intelligence with a four-level barrel, which can be filled only up to the second level (knowledge and skills). You can constantly fill this barrel, but in this case, knowledge will be poured, and skills will remain. He believed that the senseless “building-up” of the intellect could lead to the opposite process.