Question- Give a brief account of Piaget’s cognitive theory of intelligence.

Answer-

Jean Piaget views intelligence in terms of biological development which facilitates an individual’s interaction with the environment at a particular psychological level. According to Piaget, the individual should be active in discovering and structuring reality for himself. Even if he takes into consideration the impact of individual differences and emotions on intelligence, his primary focus is on developing abilities to an optimum level.

Basically, his concept of intelligence and learning is defined in terms of content, structure and function. Content refers to the organism’s response, structure refers to the genetic aspect of development and function refers to certain modes of interaction with the environment. The development of cognitive processes consists of successive structural changes needed to accommodate the new sensory data. These structural units are called schemata according to him which are part and parcel of his theory of intellect. Each stage of development is marked with a special schemata. Thus, each physical developmental stage is related to motor activities on the basis of schemata which in turn decides his intellectual development.

Piaget views that all species inherit two basic tendencies: organisation and adaptation. Organisation refers to the tendency to systematise their responses. Adaptation refers to the tendency to adapt to the environment. Piaget differentiates between two aspects of adaptation namely assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is fitting the new experiences into the older stock of experiences whereas accommodation involves changing the existing experiences to incorporate the new ones. Accommodation is the major vehicle for intellectual development.

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