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Book Reflection
“Psychology of Intelligence” by Jean Piaget is a book that covers the realm of psychology. Piaget talks about psychological development that involves a child’s growth process and attainment of knowledge. “Psychology of Intelligence” gives out Piaget’s view on how somebody can attain intelligence through various people’s experiences and interactions. One has to define intelligence as other adaptive processes that occur in human life. Many things have to be attained to get a correct definition of the book. When considering intelligence, Piaget majorly focused on the occurrence of the mental processes. Piaget ignored the basics of the exact measure of intelligence; instead, he focused on the mental event. Piaget used many approaches while describing the human learning process. Biological adaptation, accommodation, and assimilation were the approaches that took him through.
Generally, Piaget’s theory reveals that children’s thinking is far different from adults’ thinking. Their mental development is not developed to the core, making children slower in grasping ideas. Part one of the book reviews interpretations of the book about intelligence. It also brings out the critique that came from the readers. Part two talks about perception and even habit that come with intelligence, and feature three discussions mainly about how the thoughts can grow from the lowest perception to the higher perception of understanding.
“Psychology of Intelligence” is one of the books that’s read widely by many people. After reading the book, the opinions from one person to another can differ the same to reactions from the public. Jean Piaget used many contemporary thoughts in simple cognitive science. The book was good, the content was equally distributed, but Jean Piaget, was not specific about describing the human brain’s direct logical structures. Generally, the readers had a positive perception of the book as it was a must book for someone out there who was interested in reading and understanding the mind and working of the brain. It is an essential part of the book as intelligence is outlay disputed, and the content is easily understandable.
According to Jean Piaget, he states different quotes from the book to bring out its actual content and deep understanding. “Intelligence is a plastic thing and one of the most durable equilibrium behavioral equilibrium making it an essential system of living operations,” Jean Piaget, “The Psychology of Intelligence.” The quote states how intelligence can either last or fade away depending on how one is using it. Therefore, intelligence has to be involved in most things as it is the core of development. Piaget points out how feelings can outdo intelligence when it comes to thinking. A body reacts to its sense, but it has to involve intelligence if anyone makes a decision. “According to Clarapede, feelings appoint a goal for behavior, while intelligence merely provides the means, (the “technique”). Existence of awareness of ends as well as of means, and this continually modifies the goals of action” Jean Piaget, “The Psychology of Intelligence.”
The disagreement was much louder than Jean Piaget’s book’s agreement, “The Psychology of Intelligence.” Even if Piaget thought that standardizing the whole book was a very dull task, making it incomplete was the last thing Piaget could have done. The theories and quotations, and even explanations are quickly brought out and understood, but in the end, it is not evenly brought out. Even if Piaget believed that intelligence is not created, each individual is personally constructed through adaptation, assimilation, and accommodation. This is not true because somebody can build knowledge through daily activities. When it comes to children, learning is attained through learning from the mother, and grasping ideas is very low. It needs a child to associate and play with other children to gain different ideas that will eventually lead to knowledge. Despite disagreeing in knowledge acquiring, Piaget’s theory on cognitive development has helped many people understand children’s intellectual growth. Piaget strongly stresses out that children are not passive recipients’ of knowledge. Children are ready to experiment on anything to create their knowledge of things.
Several changes could have made to Jean Piaget’s “Psychology of Intelligence” to make it a better and easily understandable book. Piaget described the child’s development, but he did not fully explain the concept. Piaget could have used simpler words and fully explain the child’s development for those who will read the book to easily understand the book. Jean Piaget’s theory on “Psychology of Intelligence” lacked scientific control. Piaget used a psychological and social approach while describing the child’s development. Piaget could have at least included a scientific control nature to support his theory. Piaget’s biggest mistake was using his biological children for the study. Piaget could have looked for someone, a stranger whom they are not related to, to use as objects. The idea of using his children for the study made him a self-centered person that knows his lineage, thus not expounding on the book. Also, Piaget’s subjects used for the study were not studied and observed for the entire lifespan.
The changes would include making the development stages to be narrow for easier understanding and grasping of ideas. Jean Piaget used broad content in explaining the development stages of a child. While reading the book, one can get tired of reading all the concepts of child development; thus, making the content narrow could have saved a reader a lot. In Piaget’s theory of “Psychology of Intelligence,” he could have accounted for adult development too. Child development and how to gain knowledge were explained quite well, including how that child will grow and be an adult and how a child but an adult will gain intelligence. Cognitive development has only involved the child’s young age, the theory has not gone throughout adulthood, which leaves a theory half explained. Jean Piaget could have involved the cognitive theory throughout the child development stage to maturity, but he never considered it.
Paget wrote the book majorly to help anyone interested in early childhood education. By reading the book, one can know and understand how a child learns and how children can build up their learning ways through their daily activities and association with other people and mostly fellow children. As a teacher, by observing the child, a teacher can point out each child’s mistake and correct it without offending the child. A teacher and even a parent can understand the nature of a child and understand how such a specific child can acquire knowledge and understand the theory of intelligence and how a child can be intelligent in specific ways.
From the book, one can associate with a child because one can understand a child, both socially and mentally. Through the processes of development, a person can control a child in the best ways possible. The intelligence of s child is earned through the association with others rather than adoption; through this, a parent or a teacher will be careful with who and what a child is interacting with. A child’s interaction will alter his mentality and how he gains knowledge because knowledge is gained through interaction rather than adoption.
“Psychology of Intelligence” by Jean Piaget can easily apply to psychological disorders and also behavior in different ways. Piaget argues that some mature adult personal reasoning is a result of an individual’s outcome and not the origin of knowledge. Psychological disorders and weird behavior that can become evident in an adult were not present when an adult was growing up as a child; instead, those behaviors’ emerged over time as he/she was growing up. This could be because of the wrong company, as it is believed when a child grows up, a parent or a teacher should be very careful with the things and people that a child associates with. This can lead to a child grasping the wrong knowledge that will highly affect a child’s intelligence while growing up.
Despite Jean Piaget’s book, “Psychology of Intelligence,” having useful information, critiques have been made. The most criticized aspect was that the formal operational theory thought that it could be achieved as early as 11 years of age while the child is growing up. This was never the thing because the operational management in a child can be achieved when a child is about 15 to 16 years of age. According to the book, Jean Piaget’s child of study may have been very competent in a different way but could not a certain task simply because emotional or motivational circumstances that have been influenced as the child was growing up. Piaget states that child knowledge is attained through adoption, then how a child can fail to perform a task because of motivational circumstances?