Michelle: Alright Mark, I have a challenge for you. Give me a five-word review of a book about how babies think. Mark: Wait, they think? That’s new. Michelle: That’s six words, but it perfectly sets up our topic today. The idea that babies are just passive blobs is one of the biggest myths in human development. Mark: I mean, they mostly just eat, sleep, and produce alarming sounds and smells. Thinking seems like a bit of a stretch. Michelle: Well, today we are diving deep into a book that turned that idea on its head. It’s The Psychology of Intelligence by Jean Piaget. And what's fascinating is that Piaget, who is basically the father of child psychology, actually started his career as a zoologist. Mark: A zoologist? So he studied mollusks and then decided to apply the same principles to toddlers? Michelle: Pretty much! He looked at human minds the way he looked at snails—as organisms that are constantly, actively adapting to their environment. He saw intelligence not as a fixed score, but as a survival tool. Mark: So he saw kids as complex, curious snails? I'm intrigued and a little concerned. Michelle: It's a powerful frame! And for Piaget, it all starts with a fundamental problem every single baby has to solve: when something disappears from view, is it gone forever?

Mark: That’s a good question. For my cat, the answer is definitely yes. If the laser dot is gone, it has ceased to exist in all dimensions of space and time. Michelle: Your cat and a four-month-old human are on the same page, then. This is one of Piaget's most famous discoveries, the concept of "object permanence." He documented it by observing his own son, Laurent. Mark: Hold on. He studied his own kids? Isn't that like a scientist running trials on their own pet project? It feels a little... biased. Michelle: That's a huge and valid criticism of his methods, and we'll get to it. But the observations themselves are incredible. So, picture this: Piaget is with baby Laurent, who is maybe four or five months old. He shows him a toy, Laurent is fascinated. Then, Piaget simply covers the toy with a cloth. Mark: And Laurent does what? Cries? Gets distracted by his own feet? Michelle: He does nothing. He just stares blankly. The toy is out of sight, and therefore, out of mind. It has, for all intents and purposes, been deleted from the universe. There's no searching, no frustration. It's just... gone. Mark: Wow. So reality is literally just what you can see at that moment. That's a terrifyingly simple existence. Michelle: But then, a few months later, something amazing happens. Piaget repeats the experiment. Laurent is now about eight months old. Piaget hides the toy under the cloth at location 'A'. This time, Laurent yanks the cloth away and grabs the toy with a triumphant look. He has solved it! The object continues to exist even when hidden. Mark: A genius is born! He's cracked the code of reality. Michelle: Not so fast. This is where it gets truly weird. Piaget then lets Laurent watch as he takes the toy and very clearly hides it in a new spot, under a different cloth at location 'B'. Mark: Okay, so Laurent should just go to location 'B'. He saw it happen. Michelle: You'd think so. But instead, Laurent confidently goes right back to location 'A' and searches there, where he found it the first time. He looks confused when it's not there. This is called the "A-not-B error." Mark: That's bizarre. It’s like a bug in the baby's operating system. He knows the toy exists, but his brain is hardwired to repeat a previously successful action, even when his own eyes tell him it's wrong? Michelle: Exactly! And this reveals the core of Piaget's theory. The baby isn't just learning facts about the world; he is constructing his understanding through action. His initial success at location 'A' created a powerful mental rule: "to get the toy, do this." That rule was stronger than the new visual information. Mark: So it’s less about knowing and more about doing. That’s a huge shift. It’s like intelligence isn’t a library of facts, but a set of tools you build. Michelle: Precisely. Piaget had two key terms for this: assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is when you take new information and fit it into an existing mental structure. Mark: Right, like I have a mental folder for "birds," and when I see a robin, I just drop it into that folder. Easy. Michelle: Perfect analogy. But what happens when you see a penguin? It's a bird, but it doesn't fly. It swims. Your "bird" folder, your schema, is now inadequate. You have to change the folder itself. You have to accommodate the new information by updating your concept of what a bird can be. That's accommodation. Mark: And that's real learning. It's the mental upgrade. The A-not-B error is Laurent trying to assimilate—using his old rule—when he needed to accommodate to the new reality. Michelle: You've got it. And this process is constant. He observed his daughter, Jacqueline, discovering that shaking a rattle makes a noise. She would repeat it endlessly. These are "circular reactions." She wasn't just having fun; she was a little scientist running an experiment: "If I do X, does Y happen every time?" She was building a schema about cause and effect, one rattle-shake at a time. Mark: So the baby is literally building its own reality, brick by brick, rattle-shake by rattle-shake. It’s not just downloading the 'world' app from the cloud. It's coding it from scratch. Michelle: That is the perfect summary. They are active constructors of their own universe.

Michelle: And that process of building reality gets even more complex and fascinating when another person enters the picture. This leads us to Piaget's second, and perhaps more radical, big idea: you cannot become truly logical on your own. Mark: That feels... wrong. I think of geniuses as these lone wolves—Newton under the apple tree, Einstein scribbling equations in a patent office. You're telling me they needed a debate club to figure things out? Michelle: According to Piaget, yes. They needed to escape their own perspective. He called the thinking of young children "egocentric." And it doesn't mean selfish in a moral sense; it means they are cognitively incapable of seeing the world from a perspective other than their own. Mark: I think I know some adults who still suffer from this condition. But give me a classic example. What does that look like in a child? Michelle: There's a simple experiment. You sit a five-year-old at a table with a model of three mountains. You sit on the opposite side. You ask the child, "What do I see?" The child will describe the mountains from their own perspective, not yours. They know you're there, but they can't perform the mental rotation required to imagine your viewpoint. Mark: Ah, so their world is a single-player game. There's no 'other player's view' mode unlocked yet. Their reality is the only reality. Michelle: Exactly. And the question is, what unlocks that mode? What forces us to de-center and see other viewpoints? Piaget's answer is social interaction. Specifically, conflict and cooperation. Mark: You mean... arguing? Arguing with my siblings actually made me smarter? My parents owe me an apology. Michelle: It absolutely did! When another child says, "No, you're wrong, this is how it works," you are forced, for the first time, to confront the fact that your private understanding of the world is not universal. You have to justify your reasoning. You have to find common ground. You have to agree on the rules of the game. Mark: So logic isn't some pure, abstract thing that exists in a vacuum. It's the set of rules we invent so we can stop yelling at each other and actually get something done together. Michelle: That's the heart of it. Piaget has this incredible quote where he says logic is a "morality of thinking." It’s a system of shared norms and obligations. The rule that you can't contradict yourself isn't just a mathematical convenience; it's a social contract. If we're going to build something together, we have to agree that A can't be both A and not-A at the same time. Mark: That reframes everything. It means that every time we have a productive disagreement, we're not just exchanging opinions; we're co-constructing a shared logical space. Michelle: Yes! And this is why, for Piaget, cooperation is the engine of intellectual development. It's in the give-and-take of collaboration that a child moves from subjective, intuitive thought to objective, operational thought. They learn that their personal way of seeing a 'bird'—maybe based only on their pet canary—has to be expanded to include pigeons and eagles to be useful in conversation with others. Mark: Okay, but this brings me back to my earlier point. Piaget's ideas are beautiful, but they feel very neat and tidy. He lays out these clean stages—sensorimotor, preoperational, etc. But human development is messy. Does modern science still buy into this rigid, step-by-step progression? Michelle: That is the most significant challenge to his legacy. Modern developmental psychology sees things as much more fluid and continuous. Research has shown that kids can do things earlier than Piaget thought if the tasks are presented differently. And his work was criticized for its lack of cultural diversity—he mostly studied European children from relatively affluent backgrounds. Mark: So the specific timeline might be off, and it might not be universal. Michelle: Correct. The rigid stage theory is largely seen as an oversimplification. But what endures, and what is still so powerful, is the insight into the mechanism. The idea that we move from egocentrism to objectivity through social exchange, that logic is born from cooperation—that remains a foundational concept in how we understand the mind.

Mark: So, if I'm putting this all together... our intelligence is a two-act play. Act One is the solo performance. We're the 'little scientist' in our crib, figuring out that a ball still exists when it rolls under the sofa. We're building the basic furniture of reality through our own actions. Michelle: A perfect summary of the first part. Mark: But Act Two is an ensemble piece. To get to the next level—to understand abstract ideas, to reason, to build a society—we have to leave our solo dressing room and get on stage with other people. We have to learn to see from their perspective, to argue, to cooperate. Michelle: That's a beautiful way to put it. Piaget's ultimate message is that intelligence is a profoundly social journey. It's constructed from the ground up, first through action, then through interaction. It’s not about how smart you are in isolation, but about how you adapt and connect with the world and the people in it. Mark: It makes you look at every argument or debate a little differently. It’s not just a conflict to be won; it's a cognitive workout. It's the gym for your logic muscles. Michelle: It really is. And maybe the most powerful and practical takeaway is for anyone who raises, teaches, or manages people. They aren't empty vessels to be filled with your knowledge. They are active builders. The best thing you can do is not give them the answers, but give them interesting materials—and interesting people—to build with. Mark: So, let your kids argue with you. It's for their own good. And maybe your boss, too. Michelle: Within reason! But yes, creating a space for productive disagreement is creating a space for intelligence to grow. And on that note, we invite our listeners to think about this: when was the last time a conversation truly changed your perspective, forcing you to accommodate a new idea? We'd love to hear your stories. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.