Piaget and the importance of error
Piaget’s early career involved further developing Binet’s tests and included some collaboration with Binet’s associate Théodore Simon. His genius was to realize that errors on intelligence tests might be even more informative than the total test score used in Binet’s calculations of MA. By contrast, at the same time psychometricians became further interested in developing better measures of individual differences in g (expressed in terms of test scores). They focused largely on the structure of adult intelligence, which was generally considered to be fully developed. On the other hand, Piaget’s approach – inspired (like Binet’s) by observation of his own children – was to focus more on the kinds of errors made by children of different ages. Piaget took these to be indicators of the universalities or commonalities in underlying cognitive structures at different stages of cognitive development. The rate of cognitive development was thought to vary between children, but with all children eventually passing throgh these same stages. In due course, Piaget developed his own tests based on his stage theory of cognitive development.
Piaget’s early career involved further developing Binet’s tests and included some collaboration with Binet’s associate Théodore Simon. His genius was to realize that errors on intelligence tests might be even more informative than the total test score used in Binet’s calculations of MA. By contrast, at the same time psychometricians became further interested in developing better measures of individual differences in g (expressed in terms of test scores). They focused largely on the structure of adult intelligence, which was generally considered to be fully developed. On the other hand, Piaget’s approach – inspired (like Binet’s) by observation of his own children – was to focus more on the kinds of errors made by children of different ages. Piaget took these to be indicators of the universalities or commonalities in underlying cognitive structures at different stages of cognitive development. The rate of cognitive development was thought to vary between children, but with all children eventually passing throgh these same stages. In due course, Piaget developed his own tests based on his stage theory of cognitive development.
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