History of psychology Origins, theories and leading authors

Our history begins the S. IV a.C. With Aristotle (384 - 322 A.C.). He was born to be northern Greece. His father was the Philippian doctor of Macedonia (father of Alexander the Great). From 18 years to 38 he was at Plato School.

With Plato's death in 347 to.C., He decided to follow his biological and philosophical studies in Asia Minor. In 342 A.C. He returned to Macedonia as a tutor of Alexander the Great, a relationship that lasted two or three years. Towards 335 to.C. Aristotle had returned to Athens, where he took care of studying and explaining logic, epistemology, physics, biology, political and aesthetic ethics.

He was the first philosopher of science. Created discipline by analyzing certain problems that arise in connection with scientific explanation.

At that time it was believed that there were two worlds: The world of ideas (a perfect, unreal world) and The world of matter (The Real, The Imperfect). But Aristotle believed that there was only one world, the real, considered nature as something sacred, where all things could be in two possible ways: in act, When you have all the properties at the same time and in power, When they have not yet developed the properties, but they will have them in the future. For example, a child is a potential adult, but a child in act.

For Aristotle the mind or psyche is the first act of all things, it is what makes it possible for us to feel and perceive. There are also three types of psyche: vegetative (of the plants), sensitive (of animals) and rational (of man). Human psychology is based on the five senses.

I believed that knowledge processes occur through the senses. He argued that the mind at the time of birth is like a Rasa table, It lacks innate ideas and everything depends on learning. Learning depends directly on memory, which works based on similarity (relating similar things), contrast (observing differences) and contiguity (we remember things that are together in space and time).

Aristotle claimed that the motivation processes were guided by two poles: liking and disgust. Our mind guides us towards pleasure and rejects or separates us from the dislike. The ultimate goal of any motivation is happiness and this is achieved with the search for self -perfection; be more perfect and complete.

We have to make a great leap in history to find another great contribution to what is considered the basis of philosophical psychology, by the hand of René Descartes (1596-1650), considered the first man modern for your thinking. Belonged to the French nobility. I was very interested in mathematics, science and philosophy, and decided to combine their intellectual purposes with trips. He spent several years traveling through Europe, frequently as a voluntary gentleman in various armies. In 1649 Descartes accepted an invitation to become a professor of philosophy in the court of Queen Cristina de Sweden. He died the following year in Stockholm.

Descartes postulated the doctrine of interactionism, according to which the body and mind influence each other to some extent, and that the point of interaction between the two is in the Pineal gland.

He also argued that there should be an external universe to the thinking self, an universe not opaque to the cognitive faculties of man. Write the famous book "Method speech"(1637), where he states that we can doubt everything (what we perceive), but we cannot doubt one thing, that I am doubting; and if I am doubting it is that I think, and if I think is that I exist. From here his famous phrase "I think, then I exist " (Cogito ergo sum). For Descartes there are three things that we cannot doubt: of the self or of thought, of the world for its extension and of God for its infinity. For him the psychic is the conscious, that is, everything that exists in our conscience: imagination, fantasy, dreams, memories ..

He argued that any idea that comes to mind at the same time in a clear and different way should be true. it clear It is what is presented immediately to the mind and distinct This is what is at the same time clear and unconditioned. Descartes said that the different is known per se, Its evidence is independent of any limiting condition.

Content

• The analysis of mental life s. XVII-XVIII
• The analysis of the human structure S. XVIII
• The creation of psychophysics S. XIX
• The beginnings of descriptive psychology
• Evolutionism in Psychology
• The social orientation of psychology
• The constitution of contemporary psychology
• The development of experimental psychology
• Russian reflexological psychology
• Psychoanalysis
• Deep psychology
• The development of American psychology and behaviorism
• Gestalt Psychology
• Cognitive psychology

The analysis of mental life s. XVII-XVIII

At this time, psychology in Europe begins to be interested in the subjective, the self behind everything. The current arises associationist, that makes a genetic-biological interpretation of the mind. They believe that the mind is like a Rasa table At birth, and thanks to some psychic atoms We are obtaining the most elementary sensations, which when repeating themselves interacting and associating with each other leaving the Psychic footprints with which the mind is formed. We are what we live, the experiences we have.

The laws of the association of ideas tell us that we learn through the senses, thanks to the similarity between objects, contrast and contiguity (in space and time).

Associationist psychology is a practical psychology, which tries to explain things in a simple and demonstrable way, from here the term of empiricism.

The analysis of the human structure S. XVIII

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a professor of philosophy at the University of Königsberg, in Germany. His most famous work "The criticism of pure reason" It appeared in 1781. Kant remained single and led a methodical life and without shocks. A very concerned author of human thought and how we know reality said there is a A priori knowledge about the reality of things and then our mind adds its own order to the sensations (knowledge a posteriori), We do not have a passive mind. Also said that a distinction must be established between a freak and a Nóumeno. The first refers to an idea or perception, is the way in which things appear in our minds. The Nóumeno, on the contrary, refers to the "thing-in-yes", the effective existence of an object. This differentiation suggests that we can never know reality directly, that we are prisoners of our sensory organs and the perceptions of our mind.

Kant's disciples are consciousness psychologists: According to the Scottish philosopher William Hamilton (1788-1856), Psychology must investigate the phenomena of consciousness for external observation and statistics. Johan Herbert (1776-1841), another disciple of Kant and substitute in his chair of Königsberg (Germany) makes an important contribution saying that "what we have in consciousness varies continuously". We cannot retain a thought, or a mood, there is nothing to remain. Everything in consciousness flows in time, not in space, and we cannot do science of something that varies constantly, which has no stability.

In this historical moment also appears a series of Scottish authors such as Thomas Reid (1710-1796), which raises the question of how I can be sure that what I see and I feel is real, not a hallucination. The answer to this question is that we recognize it thanks to common sense. This school is called the School of common sense. On the other hand, Dougald Stewart (1753-1828) highlights the importance of attention as something mental. When there are several sounds, people, objects, we focus our attention on one thing, which is the figure And the rest for us will be the background, what remains in the background, which is constantly varying. Attention is something that varies and with it our perception and motivation. Finally, Destutt of Tracy (1754-1836) makes the contribution of the intuition Within our thinking, which is a kind of sixth sense; The person knows something, but he cannot say why he knows or what this knowledge is based on.

The creation of psychophysics S. XIX

So far we have seen that psychology is a mixture between philosophy and physiology. The Psychophysics Try to look for a relationship between our sensations and physical magnitudes.

He Positivism It is a current that believes that all sciences, including psychology, must show their discovery with mathematical formulas, everything must be expressed in numbers to be measured and verified. The physiologist J. Müller (1801-1858) is known for writing a book considered essential for medical students: "General Treaty of Physiology", in which he says that there is no more psychologist than the physiologist. According to him, our sensations come for the senses and nerves that transmit the stimuli captured by our body. Before equal stimuli, the sensations are different because the senses are.

There are two types of senses: those who capture the information abroad or Exteroceceptors and those that capture the interior or proprioceptors. Among the latter are the Cinesthetic that informs us about the state of our locomotor apparatus, the Cenestésicos that informs us of the general state of our body and those of orientation and balance What are they telling us if we are oriented with respect to the other bodies.

Müller described three types of thresholds within the capture of stimuli: the maximum or the magnitude of the stimulus from which we do not perceive any change in the sensation above certain values, the minimum which is the minimum magnitude or amount of stimulus we need to capture a sensation and differential, which is the amount to be added so that we capture a change in the sensation.

Ernst Weber deduced that if we divide the necessary increase to capture a magnitude by that same magnitude, we get a constant amount that called K Weber. Gustav Fichner We Weber's studies followed and deduced that to calculate the increase in a sensation, a constant of proportionality must be multiplied by the increase in magnitude and divide it by that same magnitude. But what was initially believed that it was very important, then it was seen that it was not and these formulas were disused.

The beginnings of descriptive psychology

During the s.XIX A great transformation in Europe is produced with the industrial revolution and the creation of the first factories, in addition to the important migration of the people of the countryside to the cities.

At the same time, the Descriptive psychology which is based on the description of phenomena. One of its main representatives was the English psychologist John Stuar Mill (1862-1873), a great economist. He wanted to understand the mind and analyzed it from empiricism and associationism.

He said that in the mind is the experience formed by feelings and from there we go to experiences, to what we experience. Makes a descriptive psychology as a description of feelings.

Alexander Bain (1812-1903) was another author who wrote "in 1855"The senses and intelligence"Of great European impact, where he defined two types: emotional (are governed by emotions and vibrate before anything and of Your emotions come out).

As associationist that was also, it defines two new laws of the association of ideas: the relativity where our mental states are relative because they depend on each moment on the previous situation and the diffusion that goes from organic to the psychic and vice versa.

Herman Lotze (1812-1881) was a German doctor. He was the first professor who gave classic psychology classes about perception and attention. The thought for Lotze encompasses everything, means that thought builds the perceptions that make sense. The things we see with our eyes are unconnected data, but then our mind builds the "story" of what we observe to make sense.

Evolutionism in Psychology

Evolutionism begins in the middle of the nineteenth century and affects all sciences (medicine, biology, ...). From this moment on, psychology will be evolutionary. Man is another piece of the world, one more element, it is not the center of everything.

The Functionalism, that defines behavior or behavior as adaptation to the environment. An animal that does not adapt to the environment, disappears. The ones that best adapt are the strongest. The Comparative psychology o Animal psychology that says there are no major differences between human behavior and animal. And finally we find the Differential psychology In that the important thing is adaptation, each person adapts differently, according to their characteristics, given the same circumstance, therefore it tells us that if we adapt differently, it is because we are different.

But the true contribution of those times was that of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Protestant Anglican priest. He made a trip around the world that lasted about four years collecting information from animal and plant species. When he arrived at the Galapagos Islands he found species that only existed there, due to a certain environment that made them evolve differently. Therefore, in different conditions and circumstances, we would be different and always the product of evolution.

For Darwin, man comes from a less evolved species, from primate, which thanks to a small chromosomal change we have differentiated. All this knowledge is reflected in his work "The selection of species".

A Darwin cousin, Francis Galton (1822-1911) after reading his work, decided to apply this knowledge to psychology, specifically to the study of intelligence. He was the first to use statistics in his observations. It measures the intelligence of many people in Europe and makes the average applying the Gauss bell, most people are in the center and surroundings, but a few are well below or above the average. For Galton the most important factor of intelligence is genetic, much more than environmental.

The social orientation of psychology

With the industrial revolution thanks to the enormous increase in technique and the appearance of steam machines that replace workers in their work, many people are unemployed, giving rise to important social problems. Groups are formed in the form of unions, political parties, associations, etc. that force to value the new situation in a new and different way. People must adapt, as Darwin said, only the strongest survive. There are very rich people and very poor people, without social resources.

In Germany the psychology of the peoples is also studying or Ethnological psychology, that observes the different peoples and races and their feeling of nationalism. They say that each town has a common spirit.

On the other hand, Hyppolite Taine (1818-1883) a French philosopher, contributed the idea that the environment has an enormous influence on personality. For him psychology must stop studying phenomena such as will or memory and focusing on observable facts: behavior.

The constitution of contemporary psychology

Scientific psychology appears with the first psychology laboratory on 1879, created by Wilhem Wundt (1832-1920), a professor of human medicine and physiology at the German University of Leipzig, who was interested in knowing both the physiological and philosophical problems that They form the basis of psychology. He was the founder of structuralism. In this laboratory studies sensations at a very elementary level, such as heat and cold. Wrote the book "Fundamentals of physiological psychology"One of the most cited books within psychology. For Wundt there are two essential aspects in behavior: the objective (what we see and feel) and the subjective (how we capture what we are perceiving).

With this new experimental psychology, the reaction time is described for the first time, which takes the organism to react to a certain stimulus. The first brain locations, somatic base of behavior and the idea of ​​mental illnesses such as brain diseases, something physiological, are also discovered. Wundt was an individual with vast intellectual interests. For example, between 1900 and 1920 he published a work of ten volumes entitled Psychology of the Peoples, in which he examined the psychological development of humanity.

A psychology based on the understanding of the hand of Wilhem Dilthey (1833-1910), although this would be much less experimental than the previous. Study the contribution made by culture to psychology, also being interested in the laws that govern human consciousness. He wants to understand behavior from motivational processes (the most important reason is life and value), cognitive processes (intelligence) and personality processes (which is the unity of all our psychic sensations and phenomena).

It is also at this time that William James (1842-1910), brother of the famous writer Henry James and professor of Medicine, Philosophy and Psychology, made an important contribution regarding mental life. He talked about the afferences which are the communications that occur between the interior and outside of the organism, and of the Efferences which are the response exerted by the organism from the inside outside to a stimulus. For James, consciousness is a product of evolution, it constantly changes and flows. He also described three parts of the personality: Mi or I material (my body), my social (the people around us such as family, friends, etc) and my spiritual (what I think, my ideas and sensations).

The development of experimental psychology

The first studies on memory are based on Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909). His main work "About memory"It is where your studies to measure the ability to memorize under a rigorously experimental method are reflected. First he worked with the memorization of meaningless syllables, so that the meaning of the words could not be helpful and then went to syllables, and concluded that memory was the same practically in one case as in the other. Determined that to memorize 12 syllables we need 6'8 sec./Syllaba, but to learn 24 time is more than double, 17'6 sec./syllable. He also said that to learn something new we must forget something old, this behaved and entails the questioning of the exams, since they are quickly forgotten when we have to prepare the following. At first we forget with great speed and then we do it more slowly, but we never completely forget everything, there is always a bit in memory. When we try to remember something many times these memories deform, and this is because we tend to simplify and regularize the remembered, because we establish logical relationships between unconnected memories and because affective factors of each intervene.

The creator of the first studies on intelligence was Alfred Binet (1857-1910), at first he had as the first vocation the right and did not initiate his psychology studies until 37 years of age. At the end of the S. XIX The French government forced all children to school, that's why Binet was in charge of making tests to know what children had delays. These tests were passed to schoolchildren between 3 and 15 years and called them Intelligence tests. He used a statistical criterion to measure intelligence and called him Intelligence quotient (CI), which is calculated by dividing the mental age between the chronological age and multiplying by one hundred.

In 1916 these tests were translated into English and was called Stanford test (because it resulted in this university) or Stanford-Binet test.

Russian reflexological psychology

This psychology has a very physiological perspective, everything that exists is material and this is called monism: There is only one reality, which is the material.

Ivan Sechenav (1822-1905), doctor and physiologist, was interested in knowing what he called the Brain reflexes (That is why this psychology is called reflexological). There are reflexes that are involuntary, such as when we are introduced to us in the eye and blink instinctively, and others that are volunteers. PUBLISH THE BOOK "Brain reflexes"Where he says that psychology must be studied by a psychologist-physiologist with scientific methods. On the contrary, this author leaves very few experimental works carried out.

But the most prominent figure of this psychology was undoubted. He worked experimentally and controlled with dogs, which he incommunicado from abroad in the laboratory that was called "the towers of silence". His studies led him to be interested in what he called psychic secretions, that is, those produced by the salivary glands without the direct stimulation of the food in the mouth. Pavlov noticed that when in the experimental situation a dog listened to the footsteps of the person who usually came to feed him, salivated before the food was effectively offered; However, if the footsteps were from a stranger, the dog did not salivate. These observations inspired him to carry out numerous studies that were the basis of classical conditioning. He never considered himself a psychologist, and until the end of his days he said he was a physiologist.

Another Russian scientist, Vladimir Bechterev (1857-1927) establishes the scheme on which the psychology of man is based: there is a stimulus that reaches our body and then the answer occurs: Stimulus-organism-response, It's like a chain. Another important thing that this author contributes is the concept of Environmental situation; Depending on each situation and time when we are our behavior, it will be different. To analyze this is fixed in spiders, the fabric that makes a spider depends on its environment In order to be more successful in your capture.

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), founder of psychoanalysis, was born in Freiberg, from Jewish parents. He moved to live in Vienna where he studied medicine specializing in neuropathology, specifically in children's paralysis and language problems such as aphasia.

For those times, Jews could not work in public institutions such as hospitals, nor.

His step to psychopathology occurred when he met Jean-Martin Charcot, Medical specialized in nervous diseases, who practiced hypnosis to cure hysteria patients at the Paris Hospital in Paris.

The French government granted a scholarship to Freud to go a year to study in Paris and it was there that he could observe how paralytic women with a hysterical syndrome, they got up during the pond hypnosis sessions. Check that there is a mental level that continues to work in the unconscious, even being under the effects of hypnosis.

Together with his friend Joseph Breuer, who also had a consultation in Vienna, it is how Freud made his way to psychoanalysis. Breuer treated a patient, Anna o. that had fainting, tachycardia and skin problems, but thanks to hypnosis these symptoms were reduced and even disappeared. What produced these problems in the patient were the sexual abuses he suffered in his childhood for a relative. It was from here that Freud said that behind each psychological problem there is also another sexual problem.

For Freud the mind has three subsystems: the aware or what we are thinking, the Preconscious which is what is not in the conscious, but at any time it can be and the unconscious That is hidden and our mind does not allow to emerge, it only comes out through dreams, of the mistakes we make unintentionally, of free or under hypnosis associations. He said that psychic processes are unconscious and that conscious processes are nothing but isolated acts or fractions of total mood life. This statement is related to the second principle where certain instinctive impulses classifies them of sexual impulses. According to Freud la libido It is the impulsive force that represents sexual instinct, energy related to all the emotions we call with the term love. The evolution of libido in man passes through four phases since his birth: Oral, sadistic, anal and phallic.

Another mental scheme describing Freud is from three instances called This and Super-yo. Of all of them, the deepest part of the psyche is it, in which lies everything inherited, instinctive impulses and the "pleasure principle" predominates. It is unconscious in its entirety. The self is the "principle of reality", it is aware and has the function of the verification of reality, as well as the regulation and control of the desires and impulses proving from it. Later, the self gives rise to the birth of the super-y, which is the interior representative of the authority and norms of the parents, as well as the education received and of society in general, has an unconscious field with something conscious.

Deep psychology

Within psychoanalysis, different alternatives appear to Freud's work by his disciples, among which Alfred Adler (1870-1937), Viennese doctor specialized in ophthalmology and also a Jew who joined psychoanalysis in 1902, but in 1911 Adler Adler creates its own psychoanalytic system that is based on the importance of Compensation; When something about us fails or does not satisfy us, we tend to compensate for it, the purpose is to compensate for the complexes we have. The most studied complex in Europe is that of inferiority, which is compensated by creating psychologically a superiority complex, so both mechanisms, inferior-survey are usually given together. Adler calls him Individual psychology To differentiate it from psychoanalysis, where the most important thing is the individual, the person and how it is integrated into society in the best possible way. Another important point for this author is the environmental situation in which the person moves, as well as the goals or objectives that the person proposes, since it allows their own integration. These objectives must require an effort, without being very difficult to achieve, since if they are not achieved they produce frustration.

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist who was impressed by Freud's theories. They became very friends, and Freud believed that Jung would be the unquestionable heir of the intellectual conduction of the psychoanalytic movement. There were between them an age difference of almost twenty years, and Freud began to treat Jung almost like an adoptive son. Jung became in 1910 the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association.

Later, Jung began to disagree with Freud over various theoretical points and carried out original works on personality theory, founding his own psychological school. Replaced the concept of libido of Freudian sexuality with energy. It also defines people as introverts (with a very intense inner life, who like to be alone) and extraverted (people easily to connect with others, who like being in company). Another important concept that includes is that of an individual unconscious and the collective, the latter is inherited, ideas that we already have to be born and that is within us at an unconscious level. It is an innatist psychology.

Parallel to Freud's work, the French 'work was born Pierre Janet (1859-1947), which is not psychoanalyst. Study sleepwalking and personalities to which disintegrated, that they do not have a self that unifies them, but there are several personality nuclei, in these people the manias become obsessive ideas that cannot control. Gives much importance to feelings. He says that what we all want is to feel loved, in order to achieve a psycho -emotional balance of personality. What disintegrates personality and creates greater traumas are sentimental or couple crises. If others do not accept us or do not love us, we will not love each other. Janet gives great importance to Emotional Intelligence and empathy.

The development of American psychology and behaviorism

Edward Tichner (1867-1962) He was born in Chichester (England). He marched to Germany to study in the Wundt laboratory, where they do a psychology of experience. In the laboratory they study sensations, the smallest part of human behavior or experience.

For Tichner, the study of behavior must have three parts: the study of the anatomy of the brain (physiological psychology), the study of the function or purpose of behavior (functional psychology) and the psychological study of human development (evolutionary psychology). This has been called Structuralism.

On the other hand the Functionalism by the hand of John Dewey (1859-1949), which ensures that adaptation is something very important for life, because the world changes so quickly that those who do not adapt cannot follow the rhythm, being marginalized. He points out that the purpose of thought is none other than solving problems. From here the behaviorism and the cognitivism.

Considered the creator of the behaviorism, John Broadus Watson (1878-1958), throughout his life was an enemy of inaccurate ideas and careless research. He considered that Freud's theories were very vague. According to him, to get out of the dark and dark paths of speculative philosophy and subjective psychology, the path of behaviorism should be followed, a school of psychology for which the concept of consciousness was not useful or necessary in the description, explanation, prediction and behavior control.

Watson proposed for psychology an ambitious research program, which emphasized data collection through well -designed experiments. He understood that the purpose of this science was to be able to predict an organism's response to a specific stimulus. This is sometimes called the "stimulus-response psychology" (Psychology e-r). This psychology pays little attention to thoughts and feelings. The prestige that Watson enjoyed gave a notorious impulse to the study of learning, making it one of the main spheres of contemporary psychology. He was elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1915.

Another very important figure of conductivism was Burhus Frederic Skinner, born in 1904 in Susquehanna, a city in the northeast of Pennsylvania. He studied in Hamilton College animal behavior. He says that psychology is an experimental branch of natural science, where it is possible to control and predict behavior if done under direct observation and in experimental stimulus-response conditions. He wants to completely dispense with the consciousness and introspection of psychoanalysis.

Pioneer in the experimental analysis of human behavior, along with other intellectuals of the time founded the magazine "Journal of the Analysis of Behavior". Professor at Harvard University since 1948, he introduced a course on the class program on the class program Human science and behavior. Was the discoverer of operating conditioning.

Skinner is also known for the amount of inventions that belong to "psychological technology", as a controlled medium for the study of young children, a system of guided missiles through pigeons, the operating conditioning apparatus known as "Skinner box" and The "teaching machine".

In his formal theories he does not apply at all the conceptions of common sense, according to which every human being is conscious and autonomous. In one of his books, Beyond freedom and dignity (1971), argues that the concept of autonomous man, which in essence means that the human being has free will, has expired, because he lacks utility to predict and control the behavior. He says that the behavior is made up of its own consequences.

Gestalt Psychology

Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), German psychologist, was the creator of Gestalt's psychology. While teaching at the University of Frankfort he carried out the first experiment of this new psychology. This experiment was based on the phenomenon of apparent movement, which he called FI phenomenon. The FI phenomenon takes place every time we attend a film projection: a series of static isolated photographs acquire movement for perception if they are presented in a certain way. Using a tichocoscope for this purpose, he could prove that the FI phenomenon depended on certain critical time intervals; And what is more important, he said he could not explain it from the isolated sensory elements or any other series of psychological elements. It was an irreducible experience, in which the Gestalt or total configuration preceded to the parties. With this argument he openly opposed the school of structuralism and the teachings of Wilhelm Wundt.

Wertheimer established a series of laws of the perceptual organization, based on the fact that perceptual organizations are innate. Our tendency to perceive objects in the mode of organized configurations or totalities is a given element, which proceeds in the way in which the human nervous system processes the data. Gestalt's psychology, then, is basically based on the doctrine of innatism.

Another personality that gave rise to Gestalt's psychology was the German psychologist Wolfgang Köhler (1887-1957). He emigrated to the United States before the outbreak of World War II and continued his teaching career at Swarthmore College. Contributed to establishing the concept of Introvisión learning. In his book "The mentality of the monkeys", Published in 1925, describes experiments with monkeys on the island of Tenerife during World War. He showed that the apes learn from totalities and not from the parties, and argued that what is valid for apes is much more for humans, thus increasing behaviorists with their fed up mechanical way of conceiving human learning.

Cognitive psychology

In current psychology a "cognitive revolution" is taking place, reborn interest in cognition, concept formation and thought. Much of this enthusiasm is attributed to the influence of Jean Piaget (1896-1980), a famous Swiss scientist who worked for many years in France. When he died he was the most famous and outstanding child psychologist around the world. It was for many years director of the Jean-Jaques Rousseau Institute of Geneva. Piaget claimed that children's thinking is very different characteristics from adult characteristics. With maturation there are a series of substantial changes in the modalities of thinking, which Piaget called metamorphosis, It is a transformation of the modalities of children's thought to become those of adults so deep, that it could be compared to the one that has the caterpillar until it becomes a butterfly.

To explore children's thinking processes, Piaget resorted to phenomenological method. This method is by subjective nature and demand for an interpretation by the researcher. The exploration of cognitive development was for Piaget the most profitable path to make contributions to epistemology. This development is the growth that the intellect has in the course of time, the maturation of the higher processes of thought from childhood to adulthood.

According to Piaget, the stages of cognitive development are: 1) sensory-motor stage (0-2 years) where children show a living and intense curiosity for the world around them, their behavior is dominated by the responses to stimuli; 2) Preoperational stage (2-7 years) in which the child's thought is magical and egocentric, they believe that magic can produce events and fairy tales are attractive, in addition the center of all events is believed, that all things turn in around him, it is very difficult to see things from another point of view; 3) stage of concrete operations (7-11 years), the child's thought is literal and concrete, it can understand that 8+11 = 19, but the abstract formulation, such as that of an algebraic equation, exceeds its uptake, and 4) stage of formal operations At the adult level, it is able to perform high abstractions and carry out (11-15 years), here the child enters inferences, is the stage corresponding to the higher faculties of human beings.

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