Richard B. Speaker, Jr.

Graduate Studies Coordinator and Associate Professor
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
340 Bicentennial Education Building
University of New Orleans, Lakefront
New Orleans, Louisiana 70148
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e-mail:rspeaker@uno.edu

Reflections on Piaget


I reread the following:
Piaget, Jean. (1981). Intelligence and Affectivity: Their Relationship during Child Development. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews Inc. (Trans. & Eds.: T. A. Brown & C. E. Kaegi).

This work is based on 1953 and 1954 lectures at the Sorbonne. The translators say something incomprehensible to me: "It was never the translators' intention to add to or reinterpret what Piaget had written. If additions or reinterpretations exist, they represent failures to grasp or to express Piaget's meaning " (p. vii); it appears to me that these humble translators, taking the blame for what they might consider errors of translation, misrepresent the most important function of translators which to me is to present an interpretation of a work from another language so that readers unable to acquire or to read the work in the original language have access to their interpretation of the work. A translator cannot give other than an interpretation of a work, just as any reading I do of a work, whether in the original language or not, gives me my interpretation of the work rather than a transparent copy into internal form, carrying all of the nuances of the authorial text representation; even if I am the author, my rereading vary in their interpretations as I revisit a work with different thoughts, frames of reference, motivations, emotional states, cognitive orientations, feedback from hostile or collaborating others, or even new learning between the writing and this revisitation.

What is Piaget's definition of affect and affectivity? "The term, affectivity includes feelings, properly so-called, as well as the various drives or tendencies (tendances ) including 'higher tendencies' such as the will " (p. 2).

What is the relationship between affect and cognition? "It is impossible to find behavior arising for affectivity alone without any cognitive elements. It is equally impossible to find behavior composed only of cognitive elements. Nevertheless, cognitive functions, from perception and sensorimotor schemes up to abstract intelligence with formal operations, will be distinguished from affective functions. This seems necessary because, although cognitive and affective factors are indissociable in an individual's concrete behavior, they appear to be different in nature " (pp. 2-3).

Thus, Piaget places affect and cognition in separate but interacting categories in his genetic model of knowledge. "For a student to solve an algebra problem or a mathematician to discover a theorem, there must be intrinsic interest, extrinsic interest, or a need at the beginning. While working, states of pleasure, disappointment, eagerness, as well as feelings of fatigue, effort, boredom, etc., come into play. At the end of the work, feelings of success or failure may occur; and finally the student may experience aesthetic feelings stemming from the coherence of his solution....Intrinsic or extrinsic interest is always evident. Perceptual activity, too, involves affective factors such as perceptual choice, pleasant or unpleasant feelings, the affective tonality of indifference, and aesthetic feelings " (p. 3).

Piaget states his main hypothesis, metaphorically, as: "affectivity would play the role of an energy source on which the functioning but not the structures of intelligence would depend. It would be the gasoline, which activates the motor of an automobile but does not modify its structure " (p. 5). Thus, for Piaget, affect does not "generate structure of behavior and does not modify the structures in who functioning it intervenes " (p. 6), and "A child may make mistakes because of affective interferences; but even so, he will not invent new rules of addition " (p. 6). I am far from convinced of these two theses: certainly application and use of schemes for affective purposes will make modifications in those structures through their use, implying affective modification of the structures involved in using/applying/activating those schemes; a child must invent addition by reflective abstraction from sensorimotor schemes and manipulation of environment or environmental schemes, implying that affect is central to production of these rules, initially and thus is structurally implicit over time, but perhaps Piaget was thinking of drives like hunger, sex or fatigue causing distraction--maybe ecstasy; both of these theses take the genetic structure of the mind too literally and certainly are not radical constructivist. Are they even constructivist? Piaget wishes to separate "structure and energetics " (p. 7) whereas the energetics of a structure can be incorporated into a structure containing them both, and the learner may know that she/he must be interested in something to learn about it and thereby develop methods (i.e., cognitive schemes) to make things interesting and thereby learnable. Perhaps if we move thought to the status of a sense, we can avoid some of this dualism. Biologically interest, desire and need, all affective terms, must be perceives long with 'objects' to satisfy these intrinsic natural phenomena; these must be present or re-presented to provide satisfaction. Again, they become cognitive structures within other cognitive structures. To use Piaget's automobile and gasoline metaphor against him: it is the systems of automobile, gasoline, driving skills, need and roads (plus a whole array of tangled concepts: cognitive, affective, motoric, iconic, auditory, tactile, olfactory, etc.) which make up the structure of the knowledge/system about automotive movement, thus, the energizer, gasoline, with its properties and associated sensorimotor stimuli, becomes incorporated into a cognitive whole useable by an actor. This type of discourse embedding of 'reality' allows for the psychologist to interpret structures through reflective abstraction without requiring lengthy arguments about dualities such as those Piaget presents to support the separation of affect and cognition and the separation of structure from energetic.

Some support for those who classify Piaget as constructivist: "All ideas...are constructed; all knowledge implies assimilation or interpretation. Immediate reading of experience is not possible since a system of reference is always necessary....There is as much construction in the affective domain as there is in the cognitive " (p. 12). After citing Freud, Piaget goes on: "A complex in the psychoanalytic sense is a scheme elaborated in the course of an individual's history. It evolves through constant transformation and repeated application to diverse and ceaselessly recurring situation. Its construction is analogous to the progressive construction of a system of concepts and relations. This indicates quite clearly that there is a schematization of feelings just as there are schemes of intelligence " (p. 13). So Piaget comes, or seems to come, to my positions while maintaining a dichotomy.

Piaget presents the comparison of the stage models for intelligence and feelings in the Table below. Is there such a parallel? This seems to push for a more exact correspondence than I'd expect from Piaget's comments. It also seems to violate some of Piaget's principles by putting ages (even though they are ranges) with the stages and admitting that there are hereditary (genetically preprogrammed or hardwired schemes like Chomsky's LAD) before he sensorimotor period! But maybe these are just aspects of Piaget's work which I've missed, and which commentators, critics and apologists have ignored or repressed in favor of the main theoretical postulations of genetic stage epistemology.

In the first stage, Hereditary Organizations, Piaget must distinguish between shades of the meaning of instinct . "Instinct, in fact, designates both a technique and a drive. The technique (in German, instinkt ) is a structure composed of reflexes coordinated into a single system which permits satisfaction of a need. An example would be the coordinated reflexes of sucking and swallowing which satisfy alimentary needs. The drive (in French, tendance ; in German, trieb ) is the hereditary need itself and corresponds to the energetic element of an instinct. Every instinctive technique presupposes a drive that it will satisfy " (p. 16). But is the technique not presupposing the re-presentation of a satisfaction and therefore an abstraction? I don't see the need for this dichotomy and the insistence that energetic elements are not part of the structure or at least re-presented parts. Piaget discusses eight instincts: 1) alimentary and hunting; 2) defense; 3) curiosity (= interest????); 4) sexuality (drives which are present from birth according to Freud); 5) parenthood; 6) sociality; 7) selfishness; and 8) play.

In the second stage, First Acquired Feelings, Piaget mentions the passive and active functioning of the infant's developing cognition: conditionings to perceptual stimuli and both primary (relating to the learner's own body) and secondary (relation to external objects) circular reactions--all leading to increasingly complex differentiations of the perceptual world on sensorimotor levels. The aspects of affect which Piaget claims develop in this stage are all sensorimotoric feelings associated with action and perception: tactility (he doesn't call it this, but spends some time debunking pain as a sense) and pleasure (pleasantness/unpleasantness). He ignores the infant's responses to perceptual pleasures and tactilities and the possibilities of early abstractions which must occur for the infant to recognize the recurrence of the perceptual features (like a mother's voice or face or motion) in these sensations although he cites the aspects of play in the child's circular reactions.

In the third stage, Affects Regulating Intentional Behavior, Piaget discusses several theorists' views of affect at this stage (and frankly, I'm not interested in sorting out these arguments for and against various theories) and touches on various affective aspects like feeling pressured/unpressured, exerting effort, termination regulations, fatigue feelings, interest (both quantitative and qualitative), values,and liking/disliking. He works in the idea that feelings serve various regulatory functions at this stage and the goal directedness which allows for deployment of affect in the solution of problems. He claims that values begin to be organized hierarchically, which, certainly to me, implies that there are cognitive structures associated with these affects, and that perception allows the child to impute affective connotations to other (sad, happy, etc.)--certainly tied to the abstraction of other and self in the cognitive domain. Piaget raps Freud's theory as not developmental enough: "He imagines that the child has mental functions before the appearance of language that, in fact, only develop afterward " (p. 37); Piaget, of course, only admits evidence that fits with his theory, ignoring the abstractions which must occur during these early periods of a child's life for the later development of language, and repression in the Freudian sense is to encompassing a functioning conceptual scheme for a Piagetian child to have (even as an instinct? even for survival? even hereditarily?).

In the cognitive domain, the construction of object is a crucial intellectual scheme at this stage. It consists of five major transformations: 1) object permanence and initial localization of the group structure of transformations of objects; 2) "objectification and spatialization of causality " (p. 40); 3) objectification of people as other; 4) imitation; and 5) self-consciousness and consciousness of activity with initial aspects of perceptual and affective decentration. Piaget rejects the centrality of affect to all human existence, hence departing from acceptance of Freud, and restates his initial claims that: "All objects are simultaneous cognitive and affective " (p. 41). So they must both be parts of human mental structures!! Uncanny how detailed and vague this section is.

In the fourth stage, Intuitive Affects and the Beginnings of Interpersonal Feelings, Piaget claims the concomitant efflorescence of language and the symbolic function allows and intermediates the conservation of affects such as liking/disliking others, re-presentation of self/other for self-estimation (with development of feelings of superiority/inferiority) and morality. Gardner would probably trace the first developments in multiple intelligences and personality to earlier than this "stage," but Piaget does not allow for consideration of personality until his sixth "stage;" yet habits and preferences do become more obvious as the child develops language, partially because of the ability to express those preferences verbally rather than nonverbally. Piaget argues against the conservation of feelings and for their recreation, re-presentation?, or reconstruction in an oscillating intensity within the attentional focus; the development of interpersonal schemes or interaction-pattern schemes emerges with the deployment of language for communication and manipulation of others, along with the concepts of obedience, respect, and seminormative feelings. But these do not reflect fully operational thought ["An operation is an internalized system of actions that is fully reversible " (p. 59)].

In the fifth stage, Normative Affects, Piaget considers conservation of feelings and values, the development of the will, justice and mutual respect.

In the sixth stage, Idealistic Feelings and the Formation of Personality, Piaget mentions personality but provides little elaboration. In his conclusion, Piaget admits to "affective structures " but doesn't seem happy with the idea. He claims that Òaffective structures are isomorphic with cognitive structuresÓ (p. 73), a use of "isomorphic " which I find objectionable and of dubious argumentative value. Hence, Piaget does not convince me of the need to consider affect as "nonstructural."

Piaget's Table of Stages of Intellectual and Affective Development (p. 14)
A. Sensorimotor Intelligence Intra-individual Feelings
I. Hereditary organizations: These include reflexes and instincts present at birth. Hereditary organizations : These include instinctual drives and all other inborn affective reactions.
II. First acquired schemes: These include the first habits and differentiated perceptions. They appear before sensorimotor intelligence, properly so-called. First acquired feelings: These are joys, sorrows, pleasantness, and unpleasantness linked to perceptions as well as differentiated feelings of contentment and disappointment linked to action.
III. Sensorimotor intelligence: This includes the structures acquired from six or eight months up to the acquisition of language in the second year. Affects regulating intentional behavior: These regulations, intended in Janet's sense, include feelings linked to the activation and retardation of action along with termination reactions such as feelings of success or failure.
B. Verbal Intelligence Interpersonal Feelings
IV. Preoperational representations: Here action begins to be internalized. Although this allows thought, such though is not yet reversible. Intuitive affects: These include elementary interpersonal feelings and the beginnings of moral feelings.
V. Concrete operations: This stage lasts form approximately 7 or 8 until 10 or 11 years of age. It is marked by the acquisition of elementary operations of classes and relations. Formal though is still not possible. Normative affects: This stage is characterized by the appearance of autonomous moral feelings with intervention of the will. What is just and what is unjust no longer depend on obedience to a rule.
VI. Formal operations: This stage begins around 11 or 12 years, but is not completely realizes until 14 or 15. It is characterized by thought employing the logic of propositions freed from content. Idealistic feelings: In this stage feelings for other people are overlaid by feelings for collective ideals. Parallel to this is the elaboration of the personality where the individual assigns himself a role and goals in social life.

Dewey

Belenky et al.'s Women's Ways of Knowing

Vygotsky

Freire

Glasersfeld and Freire

Foucault

Cazden

Mehan

Bruner

Gardner

Illich

Piaget

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Richard B. Speaker, Jr. | rspeaker@uno.edu | Speaker, Richard. WebPage | 8/14/99