A Piaget Primer: How a Child Thinks; Revised Edition

Offers a fascinating and understandable account of childhood development for anyone—education and psychology students, day care center workers and nursery school teachers, and parents.

Jean Piaget is arguably the most important figure of the twentieth century in the field of child psychology. Over more than six decades of studying and working with children, he brilliantly and insightfully charted the stages of a child's intellectual maturation from the first years to adulthood, and in doing so pioneered a new mode of understanding the changing ways in which a child comes to grasp the world.

The purpose of A Piaget Primer is to make Piaget's vital work readily accessible to teachers, therapists, students, and of course, parents. Two noted American psychologists distill Piaget's complex findings into wonderfully clear formulations without sacrificing either subtlety or significance. To accomplish this, they employ not only lucid language but such fascinating illuminations of a child's world and vision as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Winnie-the-Pooh, as well as media manifestations like Barney and Sesame Street. This completely revised edition of this classic work is as enjoyable as it is invaluable—an essential guide to comprehending and communicating with children better than we ever have before.

DOROTHY SINGER is a retired senior research scientist in the Department of Psychology at Yale University, as well as co-director, with Jerome L. Singer, of the Yale University Family Television Research and Consultation Center, affiliated with the Zigler Center for Child Development and Public Policy. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. Her research and publications are in the area of early childhood development, television effects on youth, and parent training in imaginative play. She has received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Teachers College at Columbia University and the Award for Distinguished Lifetime Contributions to Media Psychology from the American Psychological Association.

Trained as one of the first generation of health psychologists, TRACEY REVENSON brings a social-ecological perspective to the study of how stress and coping processes affect psychological adjustment to chronic physical illness, and how these processes are influenced by the social context. She is the co-author or co-editor of nine volumes, including Couples Coping with Stress and the Handbook of Health Psychology, now in its second edition. She is an associate editor of the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine and is on the editorial board of the journal Health Psychology. She was the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Women’s Health: Gender, Behavior and Policy. Dr. Revenson is a past-president of the Division of Health Psychology of the American Psychological Association and in 2013 was awarded the Nathan Perry Career Service Award in Health Psychology for her contributions to the advancement of health psychology as a field, nationally and internationally.