Jean Piaget
August 9, 1896 - September 16, 1980
Background
Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland. He started his career as a researcher by the age of 11 and received a Ph.D. in Zoology in 1918. He got married in 1923.
Contribution to Psychology
He started to be interested in the development of thinking. There was little work done in the area, so he labeled it genetic epistemology. He provided support for the idea that children think differently than adults. Best known for identifying stages of mental development (Schema), and established fields of cognitive theory and developmental psychology.
He created a theory that explained the stages children pass through, which identifies 4 stages:
1. the sensorimotor stage
2. the preoperational stage
3. the concrete operational stage
4. the formal operation
He wrote about 70 books and more than 100 articles about human psychology.
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Fun Facts
- His most famous book was The Language and The Thought of a Child
- He was honored with the Balzan Prize for Social and Political Sciences in 1979