Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget's Constructivist View of Knowledge and Development

Theories of development are based on views of the nature of knowledge, and therefore, Piaget argued that it is essential to examine foundational assumptions about the nature of knowledge. He argued against “copy theories” of knowledge, according to which knowledge consists of acquiring images, pictures, or representations that match reality. A flaw in these theories is that it is not possible to check the accuracy of such copies except by comparing them to reality itself. But such comparisons are not possible according to copy theories, because the point of the copy was to provide knowledge of reality; if we could directly access reality in order to compare our representations against it, we would not need such representations in the first place. Therefore, this view does not explain the development of knowledge about the world; instead, it already presupposes its existence.

For Piaget, knowledge, rather than consisting of images or representations, is built up through action on the world and through coming to know what can be done to aspects of the world. Acquiring knowledge through action begins in infancy with simple acts such as pushing and pulling, and continues throughout development, because, according to Piaget, even the most sophisticated forms of thought are interiorized actions, now carried out mentally. Knowledge is not innately preexisting within the child, nor does it arise solely from empirical experience with objects, such that this experience produces a simple copy of the object. Rather, the essential characteristic of Piaget's constructivism is that intelligence is constructed through the child's continuous interaction with the world. In this sense, Piaget considered his constructivism a third way that avoids the problems with both nativism and empiricism.

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