The Construction of Reality in the Child [Hardcover]

Jean Piaget (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 386 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1ST edition (June 1954)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465014070
• ISBN-13: 978-0465014071
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,068,212 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars more timely than ever, September 27, 2003

By 

Patricia R. Andersen "redheaded booklover" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Construction of Reality in the Child (Mass Market Paperback)

Dr Jean Piaget studied hundreds of children from birth to 18 months old and made detailed observations of his observances. Dr Piaget shows how children get a concept of what is real and what is not real and how it develops over the time period specified.

A must for any early childhood educator, the book is well written (and translated well, also). Children at that age change so rapidly, it's amazing to see how they can put their world together based on their experiences.

I highly recommend this book for early childhood educators and parents, also.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Construction of Reality in the Child, August 29, 2011

By 

dimples - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Construction of Reality in the Child (Hardcover)

This book enable me to write a paper on child psychology. It was very informative and not hard to understand. The reason I pick this book was because Piaget have a great knowledge on development of a child.

5.0 out of 5 stars ONE OF PIAGET'S MAJOR EARLIER "SUMMARY" WORKS, August 18, 2010

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Construction of Reality in the Child (Paperback)

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a Swiss developmental psychologist known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are known as "genetic epistemology".

He states in the Introduction to this book, "The study of sensorimotor or practical intelligence in the first two years of development has taught us how the child, at first directly assimilating the external environment to his own activity, later, in order to extend this assimulation, forms an increasing number of schemata which are both more mobile and better able to intercoordinate... We must now study the second aspect of the evolution of sensorimotor intelligence ... it is the subject's own interpretation of things which we must now try to analyze."

Here are some representative quotations from the book:

"Space at this stage is always imbued with a sort of solipsism or at least egocentrism, but an egocentrism unaware of itself."
"Finally ... the child henceforth conceives of his own body as being inserted in the external causal series, that is, as subject to the action of things as well as a source of actions which operate upon them."
"For the first time the subject can really place himself as an element, at once both cause and effect, in the context of a universe which transcends him everywhere."
"'Faster' in this case simply means 'more easily,' 'with less effort,' etc., but the child does not take into account the relation between time and the space covered. For adults, on the contrary, speed is measured by this relation, and the expression 'faster' loses its subjective meaning. So also, the expressions 'more time' or 'less time' have no objective meaning for little children and acquire it for adults, etc."