THE GRASP OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Action And Concept In The Young Child. Translated By Susan Wedgwood.

black cloth hardbound 8vo. dustwrapper in protective plastic. library discard in fine cond. all markings removed. binding square & tight. covers clean. edges clean. rough spot inside rear cover from old pocket (?) removal, faint erasure spot on front flyleaf, otherwise contents free of all markings. dustwrapper in near fine cond. minor rubbing, rough spot spine bottom from old label. nice reading or study copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers, bookplates, no names, inking , underlining, remainder markings etc ~ first edition. first printing (same date on title & copyright pg, no additional printings indicated). vii+360p. index. psychology. education. pedagogy. philosophy. genetic epistemology. developmental psychology. cognitive development. constructivist theory of knowledge. ~In this volume, the world's foremost cognitive psychologist turns his attention to the development of the child’s awareness of his own action. The book, published in France in 1974 as Le Prise de Conscience, reports the results of experiments conducted at the world~famed Center of Genetic Epistemology in Geneva, to distinguish between the child's ability to perform the actions required by a simple task and the child's understanding of the rationale behind the action. Children, ranging in age between four and adolescence, were asked to perform such tasks as walking on all fours, playing tiddlywinks, building a ramp for a toy car. They were then asked to explain how they had performed the task and in some cases to instruct the interviewer. Their answers show a number of suprising inaccuracies in the child's ability to grasp the nature of what he had done. Taking a broad view of his results, Piaget shows that they reveal several stages in the slow and gradual development of the child's conceptualization of his actions. In analyzing each stage, Piaget argues that the child's concept of his own action cannot be considered a simple matter of "enlightenment" but must be actively reconstructed from his experience. This view has always been at the core of Piaget's work, and it is here extended into an interesting new area of the child's mental world. Jean Piaget, past director of the Center of Genetic Epistemology, has published over forty books. He is working on a companion volume to The Grasp of Consciousness that will continue his analysis of the experiments at a more advanced level.…