Memory and Intelligence

by Jean Piaget, Bärbel Inhelder

In the course of their researches for Mental Imagery in the Child (1971), the authors came to appreciate that action may be more conducive to the formation and conservation of images than is mere perception. This raised the problem of memory and its relation to intelligence, which they examine in this title, originally published in English in 1973.

Through the analysis primarily of the child’s capacity for remembering additive and multiplicative logical structures, and his remembrance of causal and spatial structures, the authors investigate whether memories pursue their own course, regardless of the intelligence or whether, in specified conditions, mnemonic improvements may be due to progress in intelligence. They examine the relationship between the memory’s figurative aspects (from perceptive recognition to the memory-image) and its operational aspects (the schemata of the intelligence), and stress the fundamental significance of the mnemonic level known as the ‘reconstructive memory’. This was a pioneering work at the time, presenting illuminating conclusions drawn from extensive research, together with a number of constructive ideas which opened up a fresh approach to an important area of educational psychology.

Genres: Psychology

429 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 31, 1973

About the author

Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) was a Swiss philosopher, natural scientist and developmental theorist, well known for his work studying children, his theory of cognitive development, and his epistemological view called "genetic epistemology." In 1955, he created the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva and directed it until his death in 1980. According to Ernst von Glasersfeld, Jean Piaget was "the great pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing."

Reviews

[Sara Fukuda]

I don’t even know what star to review this book, so I won’t. It’s so intellectual, just the raw data from Piagets studies. Fascinating subject matter in the driest possible form.