Barbel Inhelder

In the course of their researches for Mental Imagery in the Child (1971), the authors came to appreciate that action may be more conducive to the formation and conservation of images than is mere perception. This raised the problem of memory and its relation to intelligence, which they examine in this title, originally published in English in 1973.Through the analysis primarily of the child’s capacity for remembering additive and multiplicative logical structures, and his remembrance of causal and spatial structures, the authors investigate whether memories pursue their own course, regardless of the intelligence or whether, in specified conditions, mnemonic improvements may be due to progress in intelligence. They examine the relationship between the memory’s figurative aspects (from perceptive recognition to the memory-image) and its operational aspects (the schemata of the intelligence), and stress the fundamental significance of the mnemonic level known as the ‘reconstructive memory’. This was a pioneering work at the time, presenting illuminating conclusions drawn from extensive research, together with a number of constructive ideas which opened up a fresh approach to an important area of educational psychology.

First published in English in 1969, the book opens with a chapter by Pierre Oléron on intellectual activities. These fall into three groups: inductive activities (the apprehension of laws, relations and concepts), reasoning and problem solving. It describes typical methods and essential results obtained by relevant experiments. There are two chapters by Jean Piaget and his collaborator Bärbel Inhelder. The first, on mental images, breaks new ground: it describes original experiments carried out by Piaget and associates with children of various ages. Piaget examines the relations between images and motor activity, imitation, drawing and operations. He also classifies images according to their degree of complexity and show why children have inadequate images of some processes. The second chapter is on intellectual operations and Piaget gives a summary of the main findings of a number of his earlier books, on the child’s notions of conservation, classification, seriation, number, measurement, time, speed and chance.In the last chapter, Pierre Gréco discusses learning and intellectual structures. He describes the work of psychologists with rats in mazes and formulating theories of animal learning. Gestalt psychology and various other interpretations are examined and Greco also pays attention to Piaget’s view of ‘structural learning’ based on experience.

How do children learn and how are new modes of thought developed? These questions have for years been of paramount interest to psychologists and others concerned with the cognitive development of the child. In this major work, originally published in 1974 and reporting on over ten years’ research of the Geneva School, the authors carried the pioneering investigations of Jean Piaget to a new and remarkable level. As Piaget said in his foreword to the book: ‘The novelty of the findings, the clarity of the theoretical interpretation, and the sometimes even excessive caution of the conclusions enable the reader to separate clearly the experimental results from the authors’ theoretical tenets.’The authors’ learning experiments with children were designed to examine the processes that lead to the acquisition of certain key concepts, such as conservation of matter and length. Detailed study of the progress of each individual subject revealed a number of features characteristic of situations that create conflicts in the child’s mind and certain regularities in the way these conflicts are resolved. Such data threw new light on the dynamics of the development of cognitive structures as well as on basic mechanisms of learning at the time.

Although originally published in France in 1951 this English translation was not published until 1975. The book supplements the authors’ previous publications on the development of thought in the child and is the result of two preoccupations: how thought that is in the process of formation acts to assimilate those aspects of experience that cannot be assimilated deductively – for example, the randomly mixed; and the necessity of discovering how the mental processes work in the totality of spontaneous and experimental searchings that make up what is called the problem of ‘induction’. Induction is a sifting of our experiences to determine what depends on regularity, what on law, and what on chance.The authors examine the formation of the physical aspects of the notion of chance; they study groups of random subjects and of ‘special’ subjects; and they analyse the development of combining operations which contributes to determining the relationship between chance, probability, and the operating mechanisms of the mind.

In the course of their researches for Mental Imagery in the Child (1971), the authors came to appreciate that action may be more conducive to the formation and conservation of images than is mere perception. This raised the problem of memory and its relation to intelligence, which they examine in this title, originally published in English in 1973.Through the analysis primarily of the child’s capacity for remembering additive and multiplicative logical structures, and his remembrance of causal and spatial structures, the authors investigate whether memories pursue their own course, regardless of the intelligence or whether, in specified conditions, mnemonic improvements may be due to progress in intelligence. They examine the relationship between the memory’s figurative aspects (from perceptive recognition to the memory-image) and its operational aspects (the schemata of the intelligence), and stress the fundamental significance of the mnemonic level known as the ‘reconstructive memory’. This was a pioneering work at the time, presenting illuminating conclusions drawn from extensive research, together with a number of constructive ideas which opened up a fresh approach to an important area of educational psychology.

First published in English in 1969, the book opens with a chapter by Pierre Oléron on intellectual activities. These fall into three groups: inductive activities (the apprehension of laws, relations and concepts), reasoning and problem solving. It describes typical methods and essential results obtained by relevant experiments. There are two chapters by Jean Piaget and his collaborator Bärbel Inhelder. The first, on mental images, breaks new ground: it describes original experiments carried out by Piaget and associates with children of various ages. Piaget examines the relations between images and motor activity, imitation, drawing and operations. He also classifies images according to their degree of complexity and show why children have inadequate images of some processes. The second chapter is on intellectual operations and Piaget gives a summary of the main findings of a number of his earlier books, on the child’s notions of conservation, classification, seriation, number, measurement, time, speed and chance.In the last chapter, Pierre Gréco discusses learning and intellectual structures. He describes the work of psychologists with rats in mazes and formulating theories of animal learning. Gestalt psychology and various other interpretations are examined and Greco also pays attention to Piaget’s view of ‘structural learning’ based on experience.

Although originally published in France in 1951 this English translation was not published until 1975. The book supplements the authors’ previous publications on the development of thought in the child and is the result of two preoccupations: how thought that is in the process of formation acts to assimilate those aspects of experience that cannot be assimilated deductively – for example, the randomly mixed; and the necessity of discovering how the mental processes work in the totality of spontaneous and experimental searchings that make up what is called the problem of ‘induction’. Induction is a sifting of our experiences to determine what depends on regularity, what on law, and what on chance.The authors examine the formation of the physical aspects of the notion of chance; they study groups of random subjects and of ‘special’ subjects; and they analyse the development of combining operations which contributes to determining the relationship between chance, probability, and the operating mechanisms of the mind.

How do children learn and how are new modes of thought developed? These questions have for years been of paramount interest to psychologists and others concerned with the cognitive development of the child. In this major work, originally published in 1974 and reporting on over ten years’ research of the Geneva School, the authors carried the pioneering investigations of Jean Piaget to a new and remarkable level. As Piaget said in his foreword to the book: ‘The novelty of the findings, the clarity of the theoretical interpretation, and the sometimes even excessive caution of the conclusions enable the reader to separate clearly the experimental results from the authors’ theoretical tenets.’The authors’ learning experiments with children were designed to examine the processes that lead to the acquisition of certain key concepts, such as conservation of matter and length. Detailed study of the progress of each individual subject revealed a number of features characteristic of situations that create conflicts in the child’s mind and certain regularities in the way these conflicts are resolved. Such data threw new light on the dynamics of the development of cognitive structures as well as on basic mechanisms of learning at the time.

First published in 1974. This is Volume VIII of selected works of Jean Piaget which along with Burbel Inhelder, looks at how children construct continuous quantity. That is where a quantity that is even more general than number or measurement, and gets included as special cases, namely the extensive quantity characterized by the comparison of the parts without the specification of a unit.

The nature of space, whether an innate idea, the outcome of experience in the external world, or an operational construction has long been a source of philosophical and speculative psychological discussion. This book deals with the development of the child’s notions about space.

Den verdenskendte psykolog Jean Piaget og hans nærmeste medarbejder, Bärbel Inhelder, skrev denne bog i 1966. Den udkom første gang på dansk i 1971. At den nu genudgives i let revideret form skyldes den fornyede interesse for Piaget og hans forskning, man oplever i disse år. Barnets psykologi er den første bog, hvori Piaget selv kortfattet fremlægger sin opfattelse af børns kognitive udvikling, sådan som den indtil da var blevet udviklet i de foregående ca. 45 år. I 1966 var Piaget nået så langt i sit udviklingspsykologiske arbejde, at teorien om de operative stadier var på plads. Også en række af de begreber, man plejer at forbinde med Piaget, f.eks. assimilation og akkomodation, omtales i bogen. Piagets udgangspunkt var biologisk, men han og Bärbel Inhelder overså ikke, at sociale og miljømæssige faktorer har væsentlig betydning for barnets udvikling. Piagets synspunkt, at intelligens udvikles og forandres gennem opvæksten, var et opgør med de fleste hidtidige teorier om intelligens som noget arveligt. Barnets psykologi kan udmærket læses som en introduktion til Piagets teori og forskning, endda som en relativt letlæst sådan. Den nye udgave af bogen er forsynet en oversigtsskabende introduktion til hvert kapitel af Piaget-eksperten Hans Vejleskov, der også har revideret den fyldige ordliste bagest i bogen. Begge dele gør teksten lettere tilgængelig for læseren og gør bogen velegnet til f.eks. studiebrug. Oversat fra fransk efter La psychologie de l’enfant af Vibeke og Victor Bloch.

This is Volume XIX of thirty-two in a series on Developmental Psychology. Originally published in 1960. There are certain problems of a general nature in regard to the development of spatial concepts in young children, the problem of spatial intuition as a whole is exceedingly complex, and this study discusses of a child's conception of geometry of measurement and metrical geometry.

This is Volume XXII of thirty-two on a series of Developmental Psychology. Originally published in 1958, this text offers a translation from French of an essay on the construction of formal operational structures to explain part of the growth of logic in a child's brain and development. It looks at propositional logic, the integration of formal thought and the operational schemata of formal logic.

This volume from Piaget s laboratory in Geneva deals primarily with the development of notions of measurement and geometrical concepts like coordinates, angles, and areas. It is a companion piece to The Child s Conception of Space."

This translation aims to provide interested psychologists and mathematics educators with a new catalyst for research in cognitive development. It should also prove useful to the mathematics teacher at the precollegiate level who has an interest in the theory of cognitive development and who teaches probability in the classroom. It is, in fact, one of the few works by Piaget that the beginner can read profitably, without needing too much help from the critics, because it gives a relatively clear example of the development of his techniques and thought.

First published in 1974. This is Volume VIII of selected works of Jean Piaget which along with Burbel Inhelder, looks at how children construct continuous quantity. That is where a quantity that is even more general than number or measurement, and gets included as special cases, namely the extensive quantity characterized by the comparison of the parts without the specification of a unit.