Thinking About Thinking The article “Out of Sight, But Not Out of Mind” by Jean Piaget (1954) describes intellectual processes of humans in ways that most people have not thought about before. Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who created the foundation for studies on how humans develop their thought processes and reasoning. Our intellectual capabilities are not something that we simply learn from those around us through teaching, but rather we learn through a process of maturing instead, according to Piaget. Some levels of being able to process thoughts won’t be understood until a child has reached a certain point of development. The Beginning of Piaget’s Studies Piaget began as a biologist and also worked in a laboratory developing standardized tests for children. While working there, he became interested in how children of certain age ranges tended to make the same mistakes on tests. Piaget began studying the development of intellect throughout childhood. He developed a theory that states “...all humans develop through four stages of cognitive development
that always occur in the same sequence and at approximately the same ages”. Stages are seen in the table below.
Piaget used his own children in his studies, which could make his studies questionable. Advancing Cognitively in Life One important concept he discovered was the idea of object permanence-this refers to one’s ability of deciphering that an object has not completely disappeared when it has become out of reach, view, and sound. In the table ‘Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development,’ in order to advance from the Sensori-motor stage to the Preoperational stage, one must have accomplished object permanence. Using a variety of games Piaget would play with his children, he was able to observe the actions that led them to develop object permanence. He developed
a set of six stages between birth and up to two years of age that displayed how a child grasps the concept of object permanence. By the sixth stage, the baby has made the leap to object permanence and is able to use what they know and have seen to solve problems. This concept is the basis to advance forward cognitively in life, according to Piaget’s studies. Controversy of Intellectual Development There are many psychologists today that have published studies that do not agree with Piagets. Many of them do not believe that intellectual development stems from maturity, but rather from learning processes; also, that it does not occur in stages, but more-so as an ongoing process. Some of the studies that have been done by other psychologists, such as Renee Baillargeon, have showed infants developing object permanence at ages as young as two and a half months old. New technologies and ideas have come out since Piaget’s time making his studies more controversial in today’s psychological world.