Provided by David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D.
Surgeon General of the United States of America
Chapter 3: Children and Mental Health
Theories of Development
Intellectual Development
The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget also developed a stage-constructed theory of children’s intellectual development. Piaget’s theory, based on several decades’ observations of children (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958), was about how children gradually acquire the ability to understand the world around them through active engagement with it. He was the first to recognize that infants take an active role in getting to know their world and that children have a different understanding of the world than do adults. The principal limitations of Piaget’s theories are that they are descriptive rather than explanatory. Furthermore, he neglected variability in development and temperament and did not consider the crucial interplay between a child’s intellectual development and his or her social experiences (Bidell & Fischer, 1992).
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