text:
Piaget's theory of cognitive development

Piaget's theory of cognitive development, or his genetic epistemology, is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence. It was originated by the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980). The theory deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans gradually come to acquire, construct, and use it. Piaget's theory is mainly known as a developmental stage theory.

In 1919, while working at the Alfred Binet Laboratory School in Paris, Piaget "was intrigued by the fact that children of different ages made different kinds of mistakes while solving problems". His experience and observations at the Alfred Binet Laboratory were the beginnings of his theory of cognitive development.

He believed that children of different ages made different mistakes because of the "quality rather than quantity" of their intelligence. Piaget proposed four stages to describe the development process of children: sensorimotor stage, pre-operational stage, concrete operational stage, and formal operational stage. Each stage describes a specific age group. In each stage, he described how children develop their cognitive skills. For example, he believed that children experience the world through actions, representing things with words, thinking logically, and using reasoning.

To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganisation of mental processes resulting from biological maturation and environmental experience. He believed that children construct an understanding of the world around them, experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment, then adjust their ideas accordingly. Moreover, Piaget claimed that cognitive development is at the centre of the human organism, and language is contingent on knowledge and understanding acquired through cognitive development. Piaget's earlier work received the greatest attention.

Child-centred classrooms and "open education" are direct applications of Piaget's views. Despite its huge success, Piaget's theory has some limitations that Piaget recognised himself: for example, the theory supports sharp stages rather than continuous development (horizontal and vertical décalage).

Nature of intelligence: operative and figurative
Piaget argued that reality is a construction. Reality is defined in reference to the two conditions that define dynamic systems. Specifically, he argued that reality involves transformations and states. Transformations refer to all manners of changes that a thing or person can undergo. States refer to the conditions or the appearances in which things or persons can be found between transformations. For example, there might be changes in shape or form (for instance, liquids are reshaped as they are transferred from one vessel to another, and similarly humans change in their characteristics as they grow older), in size (a toddler does not walk and run without falling, but after 7 yrs of age, the child's sensorimotor anatomy is well developed and now acquires skill faster), or in placement or location in space and time (e.g., various objects or persons might be found at one place at one time and at a different place at another time). Thus, Piaget argued, if human intelligence is to be adaptive, it must have functions to represent both the transformational and the static aspects of reality. He proposed that operative intelligence is responsible for the representation and manipulation of the dynamic or transformational aspects of reality, and that figurative intelligence is responsible for the representation of the static aspects of reality.

Operative intelligence is the active aspect of intelligence. It involves all actions, overt or covert, undertaken in order to follow, recover, or anticipate the transformations of the objects or persons of interest. Figurative intelligence is the more or less static aspect of intelligence, involving all means of representation used to retain in mind the states (i.e., successive forms, shapes, or locations) that intervene between transformations. That is, it involves perception, imitation, mental imagery, drawing, and language. Therefore, the figurative aspects of intelligence derive their meaning from the operative aspects of intelligence, because states cannot exist independently of the transformations that interconnect them. Piaget stated that the figurative or the representational aspects of intelligence are subservient to its operative and dynamic aspects, and therefore, that understanding essentially derives from the operative aspect of intelligence.

At any time, operative intelligence frames how the world is understood and it changes if understanding is not successful. Piaget stated that this process of understanding and change involves two basic functions: assimilation and accommodation.

Assimilation and accommodation
Through his study of the field of education, Piaget focused on two processes, which he named assimilation and accommodation. To Piaget, assimilation meant integrating external elements into structures of lives or environments, or those we could have through experience. Assimilation is how humans perceive and adapt to new information. It is the process of fitting new information into pre-existing cognitive schemas. Assimilation in which new experiences are reinterpreted to fit into, or assimilate with, old ideas and analyzing new facts accordingly. It occurs when humans are faced with new or unfamiliar information and refer to previously learned information in order to make sense of it. In contrast, accommodation is the process of taking new information in one's environment and altering pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the new information. This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to deal with a new object or situation. Accommodation is imperative because it is how people will continue to interpret new concepts, schemas, frameworks, and more.

Various teaching methods have been developed based on Piaget's insights that call for the use of questioning and inquiry-based education to help learners more blatantly face the sorts of contradictions to their pre-existing schemas that are conducive to learning.

Piaget believed that the human brain has been programmed through evolution to bring equilibrium, which is what he believed ultimately influences structures by the internal and external processes through assimilation and accommodation.

Piaget's understanding was that assimilation and accommodation cannot exist without the other. They are two sides of a coin. To assimilate an object into an existing mental schema, one first needs to take into account or accommodate to the particularities of this object to a certain extent. For instance, to recognize (assimilate) an apple as an apple, one must first focus (accommodate) on the contour of this object. To do this, one needs to roughly recognize the size of the object. Development increases the balance, or equilibration, between these two functions. When in balance with each other, assimilation and accommodation generate mental schemas of the operative intelligence. When one function dominates over the other, they generate representations which belong to figurative intelligence.

Cognitive equilibration
Piaget agreed with most other developmental psychologists in that there are three very important factors that are attributed to development: maturation, experience, and the social environment. But where his theory differs involves his addition of a fourth factor, equilibration, which "refers to the organism's attempt to keep its cognitive schemes in balance". . Also see Piaget, and Boom's detailed account.

Equilibration is the motivational element that guides cognitive development. As humans, we have a biological need to make sense of the things we encounter in every aspect of our world in order to muster a greater understanding of it, and therefore, to flourish in it. This is where the concept of equilibration comes into play. If a child is confronted with information that does not fit into his or her previously held schemes, disequilibrium is said to occur. This, as one would imagine, is unsatisfactory to the child, so he or she will try to fix it. The incongruence will be fixed in one of three ways. The child will either ignore the newly discovered information, assimilate the information into a preexisting scheme, or accommodate the information by modifying a different scheme. Using any of these methods will return the child to a state of equilibrium, however, depending on the information being presented to the child, that state of equilibrium is not likely to be permanent.

For example, let's say Dave, a three-year-old boy who has grown up on a farm and is accustomed to seeing Horses regularly, has been brought to the zoo by his parents and sees an Elephant for the first time. Immediately he shouts "look mommy, Horsey!" Because Dave does not have a scheme for Elephants, he interprets the Elephant as being a Horse due to its large size, color, tail, and long face. He believes the Elephant is a Horse until his mother corrects. The new information Dave has received has put him in a state of disequilibrium. He now has to do one of three things. He can either: (1) turn his head, move towards another section of animals, and ignore this newly presented information; (2) distort the defining characteristics of an Elephant so that he can assimilate it into his "Horsey" scheme; or (3) he can modify his preexisting "Animal" schema to accommodate this new information regarding Elephants by slightly altering his knowledge of animals as he knows them.

With age comes entry into a higher stage of development. With that being said, previously held schemes (and the children that hold them) are more than likely to be confronted with discrepant information the older they get. Silverman and Geiringer propose that one would be more successful in attempting to change a child's mode of thought by exposing that child to concepts that reflect a higher rather than a lower stage of development. Furthermore, children are better influenced by modeled performances that are one stage above their developmental level, as opposed to modeled performances that are either lower or two or more stages above their level.

Four stages of development
In his theory of cognitive development, Jean Piaget proposed that humans progress through four developmental stages: the sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage, and formal operational stage.

Sensorimotor stage

The first of these, the sensorimotor stage "extends from birth to the acquisition of language". In this stage, infants progressively construct knowledge and understanding of the world by coordinating experiences (such as vision and hearing) from physical interactions with objects (such as grasping, sucking, and stepping). Infants gain knowledge of the world from the physical actions they perform within it. They progress from reflexive, instinctual action at birth to the beginning of symbolic thought toward the end of the stage.

Children learn that they are separate from the environment. They can think about aspects of the environment, even though these may be outside the reach of the child's senses. In this stage, according to Piaget, the development of object permanence is one of the most important accomplishments. Object permanence is a child's understanding that an object continues to exist even though they cannot see or hear it. Peek-a-boo is a game in which children who have yet to fully develop object permanence respond to sudden hiding and revealing of a face. By the end of the sensorimotor period, children develop a permanent sense of self and object and will quickly lose interest in Peek-a-boo.

Piaget divided the sensorimotor stage into six sub-stages".

Preoperational stage
By observing sequences of play, Piaget was able to demonstrate the second stage of his theory, the pre-operational stage. He said that this stage starts towards the end of the second year. It starts when the child begins to learn to speak and lasts up until the age of seven. During the pre-operational stage of cognitive development, Piaget noted that children do not yet understand concrete logic and cannot mentally manipulate information. Children's increase in playing and pretending takes place in this stage. However, the child still has trouble seeing things from different points of view. The children's play is mainly categorized by symbolic play and manipulating symbols. Such play is demonstrated by the idea of checkers being snacks, pieces of paper being plates, and a box being a table. Their observations of symbols exemplifies the idea of play with the absence of the actual objects involved.

The pre-operational stage is sparse and logically inadequate in regard to mental operations. The child is able to form stable concepts as well as magical beliefs (magical thinking). The child, however, is still not able to perform operations, which are tasks that the child can do mentally, rather than physically. Thinking in this stage is still egocentric, meaning the child has difficulty seeing the viewpoint of others. The Pre-operational Stage is split into two substages: the symbolic function substage, and the intuitive thought substage. The symbolic function substage is when children are able to understand, represent, remember, and picture objects in their mind without having the object in front of them. The intuitive thought substage is when children tend to propose the questions of "why?" and "how come?" This stage is when children want to understand everything.

Symbolic function substage
At about two to four years of age, children cannot yet manipulate and transform information in a logical way. However, they now can think in images and symbols. Other examples of mental abilities are language and pretend play. Symbolic play is when children develop imaginary friends or role-play with friends. Children's play becomes more social and they assign roles to each other. Some examples of symbolic play include playing house, or having a tea party. The type of symbolic play in which children engage is connected with their level of creativity and ability to connect with others. Additionally, the quality of their symbolic play can have consequences on their later development. For example, young children whose symbolic play is of a violent nature tend to exhibit less prosocial behavior and are more likely to display antisocial tendencies in later years.

In this stage, there are still limitations, such as egocentrism and precausal thinking.

Egocentrism occurs when a child is unable to distinguish between their own perspective and that of another person. Children tend to stick to their own viewpoint, rather than consider the view of others. Indeed, they are not even aware that such a concept as "different viewpoints" exists. Egocentrism can be seen in an experiment performed by Piaget and Swiss developmental psychologist Bärbel Inhelder, known as the three mountain problem. In this experiment, three views of a mountain are shown to the child, who is asked what a traveling doll would see at the various angles. The child will consistently describe what they can see from the position from which they are seated, regardless of the angle from which they are asked to take the doll's perspective. Egocentrism would also cause a child to believe, "I like The Lion Guard, so the high school student next door must like The Lion Guard, too."

Similar to preoperational children's egocentric thinking is their structuring of a cause and effect relationships. Piaget coined the term "precausal thinking" to describe the way in which preoperational children use their own existing ideas or views, like in egocentrism, to explain cause-and-effect relationships. Three main concepts of causality as displayed by children in the preoperational stage include: animism, artificialism and transductive reasoning.

Animism is the belief that inanimate objects are capable of actions and have lifelike qualities. An example could be a child believing that the sidewalk was mad and made them fall down, or that the stars twinkle in the sky because they are happy. Artificialism refers to the belief that environmental characteristics can be attributed to human actions or interventions. For example, a child might say that it is windy outside because someone is blowing very hard, or the clouds are white because someone painted them that color. Finally, precausal thinking is categorized by transductive reasoning. Transductive reasoning is when a child fails to understand the true relationships between cause and effect. Unlike deductive or inductive reasoning (general to specific, or specific to general), transductive reasoning refers to when a child reasons from specific to specific, drawing a relationship between two separate events that are otherwise unrelated. For example, if a child hears the dog bark and then a balloon popped, the child would conclude that because the dog barked, the balloon popped.

Intuitive thought substage
A main feature of the pre-operational stage of development is primitive reasoning. Between the ages of four and seven, reasoning changes from symbolic thought to intuitive thought. This stage is "marked by greater dependence on intuitive thinking rather than just perception." Children begin to have more automatic thoughts that don't require evidence. During this stage there is a heightened sense of curiosity and need to understand how and why things work. Piaget named this substage "intuitive thought" because they are starting to develop more logical thought but cannot explain their reasoning. Thought during this stage is still immature and cognitive errors occur. Children in this stage depend on their own subjective perception of the object or event. This stage is characterized by centration, conservation, irreversibility, class inclusion, and transitive inference.

Centration is the act of focusing all attention on one characteristic or dimension of a situation, whilst disregarding all others. Conservation is the awareness that altering a substance's appearance does not change its basic properties. Children at this stage are unaware of conservation and exhibit centration. Both centration and conservation can be more easily understood once familiarized with Piaget's most famous experimental task.

In this task, a child is presented with two identical beakers containing the same amount of liquid. The child usually notes that the beakers do contain the same amount of liquid. When one of the beakers is poured into a taller and thinner container, children who are younger than seven or eight years old typically say that the two beakers no longer contain the same amount of liquid, and that the taller container holds the larger quantity (centration), without taking into consideration the fact that both beakers were previously noted to contain the same amount of liquid. Due to superficial changes, the child was unable to comprehend that the properties of the substances continued to remain the same (conservation).

Irreversibility is a concept developed in this stage which is closely related to the ideas of centration and conservation. Irreversibility refers to when children are unable to mentally reverse a sequence of events. In the same beaker situation, the child does not realize that, if the sequence of events was reversed and the water from the tall beaker was poured back into its original beaker, then the same amount of water would exist. Another example of children's reliance on visual representations is their misunderstanding of "less than" or "more than". When two rows containing equal numbers of blocks are placed in front of a child, one row spread farther apart than the other, the child will think that the row spread farther contains more blocks.

Class inclusion refers to a kind of conceptual thinking that children in the preoperational stage cannot yet grasp. Children's inability to focus on two aspects of a situation at once inhibits them from understanding the principle that one category or class can contain several different subcategories or classes. For example, a four-year-old girl may be shown a picture of eight dogs and three cats. The girl knows what cats and dogs are, and she is aware that they are both animals. However, when asked, "Are there more dogs or animals?" she is likely to answer "more dogs". This is due to her difficulty focusing on the two subclasses and the larger class all at the same time. She may have been able to view the dogs as dogs or animals, but struggled when trying to classify them as both, simultaneously. Similar to this is concept relating to intuitive thought, known as "transitive inference".

Transitive inference is using previous knowledge to determine the missing piece, using basic logic. Children in the preoperational stage lack this logic. An example of transitive inference would be when a child is presented with the information "A" is greater than "B" and "B" is greater than "C". This child may have difficulty here understanding that "A" is also greater than "C".

Concrete operational stage
The concrete operational stage is the third stage of Piaget's theory of cognitive development. This stage, which follows the preoperational stage, occurs between the ages of 7 and 11 (middle childhood and preadolescence) years, and is characterized by the appropriate use of logic. During this stage, a child's thought processes become more mature and "adult like". They start solving problems in a more logical fashion. Abstract, hypothetical thinking is not yet developed in the child, and children can only solve problems that apply to concrete events or objects. At this stage, the children undergo a transition where the child learns rules such as conservation. Piaget determined that children are able to incorporate inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning involves drawing inferences from observations in order to make a generalization. In contrast, children struggle with deductive reasoning, which involves using a generalized principle in order to try to predict the outcome of an event. Children in this stage commonly experience difficulties with figuring out logic in their heads. For example, a child will understand that "A is more than B" and "B is more than C". However, when asked "is A more than C?", the child might not be able to logically figure the question out mentally.

Two other important processes in the concrete operational stage are logic and the elimination of egocentrism.

Egocentrism is the inability to consider or understand a perspective other than one's own. It is the phase where the thought and morality of the child is completely self focused. During this stage, the child acquires the ability to view things from another individual's perspective, even if they think that perspective is incorrect. For instance, show a child a comic in which Jane puts a doll under a box, leaves the room, and then Melissa moves the doll to a drawer, and Jane comes back. A child in the concrete operations stage will say that Jane will still think it's under the box even though the child knows it is in the drawer. (See also False-belief task.)

Children in this stage can, however, only solve problems that apply to actual (concrete) objects or events, and not abstract concepts or hypothetical tasks. Understanding and knowing how to use full common sense has not yet been completely adapted.

Piaget determined that children in the concrete operational stage were able to incorporate inductive logic. On the other hand, children at this age have difficulty using deductive logic, which involves using a general principle to predict the outcome of a specific event. This includes mental reversibility. An example of this is being able to reverse the order of relationships between mental categories. For example, a child might be able to recognize that his or her dog is a Labrador, that a Labrador is a dog, and that a dog is an animal, and draw conclusions from the information available, as well as apply all these processes to hypothetical situations.

The abstract quality of the adolescent's thought at the formal operational level is evident in the adolescent's verbal problem solving ability. The logical quality of the adolescent's thought is when children are more likely to solve problems in a trial-and-error fashion. Adolescents begin to think more as a scientist thinks, devising plans to solve problems and systematically test opinions. They use hypothetical-deductive reasoning, which means that they develop hypotheses or best guesses, and systematically deduce, or conclude, which is the best path to follow in solving the problem. During this stage the adolescent is able to understand love, logical proofs and values. During this stage the young person begins to entertain possibilities for the future and is fascinated with what they can be.

Adolescents also are changing cognitively by the way that they think about social matters. One thing that brings about a change is egocentrism. This happens by heightening self-consciousness and giving adolescents an idea of who they are through their personal uniqueness and invincibility. Adolescent egocentrism can be dissected into two types of social thinking: imaginary audience and personal fable. Imaginary audience consists of an adolescent believing that others are watching them and the things they do. Personal fable is not the same thing as imaginary audience but is often confused with imaginary audience. Personal fable consists of believing that you are exceptional in some way. These types of social thinking begin in the concrete stage but carry on to the formal operational stage of development.

Testing for concrete operations
Piagetian tests are well known and practiced to test for concrete operations. The most prevalent tests are those for conservation. There are some important aspects that the experimenter must take into account when performing experiments with these children.

One example of an experiment for testing conservation is the water level task. An experimenter will have two glasses that are the same size, fill them to the same level with liquid, and make sure the child understands that both of the glasses have the same amount of water in them. Then, the experimenter will pour the liquid from one of the small glasses into a tall, thin glass. The experimenter will then ask the child if the taller glass has more liquid, less liquid, or the same amount of liquid. The child will then give his answer. There are three keys for the experimenter to keep in mind with this experiment. These are justification, number of times asking, and word choice.
 * Justification: After the child has answered the question being posed, the experimenter must ask why the child gave that answer. This is important because the answers they give can help the experimenter to assess the child's developmental age.
 * Number of times asking: Some argue that a child's answers can be influenced by the number of times an experimenter asks them about the amount of water in the glasses. For example, a child is asked about the amount of liquid in the first set of glasses and then asked once again after the water is moved into a different sized glass. Some children will doubt their original answer and say something they would not have said if they did not doubt their first answer.
 * Word choice: The phrasing that the experimenter uses may affect how the child answers. If, in the liquid and glass example, the experimenter asks, "Which of these glasses has more liquid?", the child may think that his thoughts of them being the same is wrong because the adult is saying that one must have more. Alternatively, if the experimenter asks, "Are these equal?", then the child is more likely to say that they are, because the experimenter is implying that they are.
 * Classification: As children's experiences and vocabularies grow, they build schemata and are able to organize objects in many different ways. They also understand classification hierarchies and can arrange objects into a variety of classes and subclasses.
 * Identity: One feature of concrete operational thought is the understanding that objects have qualities that do not change even if the object is altered in some way. For instance, mass of an object does not change by rearranging it. A piece of chalk is still chalk even when the piece is broken in two.
 * Reversibility: The child learns that some things that have been changed can be returned to their original state. Water can be frozen and then thawed to become liquid again; however, eggs cannot be unscrambled. Children use reversibility a lot in mathematical problems such as: 2 + 3 = 5 and 5 – 3 = 2.
 * Conservation: The ability to understand that the quantity (mass, weight volume) of something doesn't change due to the change of appearance.
 * Decentration: The ability to focus on more than one feature of scenario or problem at a time. This also describes the ability to attend to more than one task at a time. Decentration is what allows for conservation to occur.
 * Seriation: Arranging items along a quantitative dimension, such as length or weight, in a methodical way is now demonstrated by the concrete operational child. For example, they can logically arrange a series of different-sized sticks in order by length. Younger children not yet in the concrete stage approach a similar task in a haphazard way.

These new cognitive skills increase the child's understanding of the physical world. However, according to Piaget, they still cannot think in abstract ways. Additionally, they do not think in systematic scientific ways. For example, most children under age twelve would not be able to come up with the variables that influence the period that a pendulum takes to complete its arc. Even if they were given weights they could attach to strings in order to do this experiment, they would not be able to draw a clear conclusion.

Formal operational stage
The final stage is known as the formal operational stage (early to middle adolescence, beginning at age 11 and finalizing around 14–15): Intelligence is demonstrated through the logical use of symbols related to abstract concepts. This form of thought includes "assumptions that have no necessary relation to reality." At this point, the person is capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning. During this time, people develop the ability to think about abstract concepts.

Piaget stated that "hypothetico-deductive reasoning" becomes important during the formal operational stage. This type of thinking involves hypothetical "what-if" situations that are not always rooted in reality, i.e. counterfactual thinking. It is often required in science and mathematics.

Children in primary school years mostly use inductive reasoning, but adolescents start to use deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is when children draw general conclusions from personal experiences and specific facts. Adolescents learn how to use deductive reasoning by applying logic to create specific conclusions from abstract concepts. This capability results from their capacity to think hypothetically.
 * Abstract thought emerges during the formal operational stage. Children tend to think very concretely and specifically in earlier stages, and begin to consider possible outcomes and consequences of actions.
 * Metacognition, the capacity for "thinking about thinking" that allows adolescents and adults to reason about their thought processes and monitor them.
 * Problem-solving is demonstrated when children use trial-and-error to solve problems. The ability to systematically solve a problem in a logical and methodical way emerges.

"However, research has shown that not all persons in all cultures reach formal operations, and most people do not use formal operations in all aspects of their lives".

Experiments
Piaget and his colleagues conducted several experiments to assess formal operational thought.

In one of the experiments, Piaget evaluated the cognitive capabilities of children of different ages through the use of a scale and varying weights. The task was to balance the scale by hooking weights on the ends of the scale. To successfully complete the task, the children must use formal operational thought to realize that the distance of the weights from the center and the heaviness of the weights both affected the balance. A heavier weight has to be placed closer to the center of the scale, and a lighter weight has to be placed farther from the center, so that the two weights balance each other. While 3- to 5- year olds could not at all comprehend the concept of balancing, children by the age of 7 could balance the scale by placing the same weights on both ends, but they failed to realize the importance of the location. By age 10, children could think about location but failed to use logic and instead used trial-and-error. Finally, by age 13 and 14, in early to middle adolescence, some children more clearly understood the relationship between weight and distance and could successfully implement their hypothesis.

The stages and causation
Piaget sees children's conception of causation as a march from "primitive" conceptions of cause to those of a more scientific, rigorous, and mechanical nature. These primitive concepts are characterized as supernatural, with a decidedly non-natural or non-mechanical tone. Piaget has as his most basic assumption that babies are phenomenists. That is, their knowledge "consists of assimilating things to schemas" from their own action such that they appear, from the child's point of view, "to have qualities which, in fact, stem from the organism". Consequently, these "subjective conceptions," so prevalent during Piaget's first stage of development, are dashed upon discovering deeper empirical truths.

Piaget gives the example of a child believing that the moon and stars follow him on a night walk. Upon learning that such is the case for his friends, he must separate his self from the object, resulting in a theory that the moon is immobile, or moves independently of other agents.

The second stage, from around three to eight years of age, is characterized by a mix of this type of magical, animistic, or "non-natural" conceptions of causation and mechanical or "naturalistic" causation. This conjunction of natural and non-natural causal explanations supposedly stems from experience itself, though Piaget does not make much of an attempt to describe the nature of the differences in conception. In his interviews with children, he asked questions specifically about natural phenomena, such as: "What makes clouds move?", "What makes the stars move?", "Why do rivers flow?" The nature of all the answers given, Piaget says, are such that these objects must perform their actions to "fulfill their obligations towards men". He calls this "moral explanation".

Postulated physical mechanisms underlying schemes, schemas, and stages
First note the distinction between 'schemes' (analogous to 1D lists of action-instructions, e.g. leading to separate pen-strokes), and figurative 'schemas' (aka 'schemata', akin to 2D drawings/sketches or virtual 3D models); see schema. This distinction (often overlooked by translators) is emphasized by Piaget & Inhelder, and others + (Appendix p. 21-22).

In 1967, Piaget considered the possibility of RNA molecules as likely embodiments of his still-abstract schemes (which he promoted as units of action) — though he did not come to any firm conclusion. At that time, due to work such as that of Swedish biochemist Holger Hydén, RNA concentrations had, indeed, been shown to correlate with learning.

To date, with one exception, it has been impossible to investigate such RNA hypotheses by traditional direct observation and logical deduction. The one exception is that such ultra-micro sites would almost certainly have to use optical communication, and recently studies have demonstrated that nerve-fibres can indeed transmit light/infra-red (in addition to their acknowledged role). However it accords with the philosophy of science, especially scientific realism, to do indirect investigations of such phenomena which are intrinsically unobservable for practical reasons. The art then is to build up a plausible interdisciplinary case from the indirect evidence (as indeed the child does during concept development) — and then retain that model until it is disproved by observable-or-other new evidence which then calls for new accommodation.

In that spirit, it now might be said that the RNA/infra-red model is valid (for explaining Piagetian higher intelligence). Anyhow the current situation opens the way for more testing, and further development in several directions, including the finer points of Piaget's agenda.

Practical applications
Parents can use Piaget's theory in many ways to support their child's growth. Teachers can also use Piaget's theory to help their students. For example, recent studies have shown that children in the same grade and of the same age perform differently on tasks measuring basic addition and subtraction accuracy. Children in the preoperational and concrete operational levels of cognitive development perform arithmetic operations (such as addition and subtraction) with similar accuracy; however, children in the concrete operational level have been able to perform both addition problems and subtraction problems with overall greater precision. Teachers can use Piaget's theory to see where each child in their class stands with each subject by discussing the syllabus with their students and the students' parents.

The stage of cognitive growth of a person differ from another. Cognitive development or thinking is an active process from the beginning to the end of life. Intellectual advancement happens because people at every age and developmental period look for cognitive equilibrium. To achieve this balance, the easiest way is to understand the new experiences through the lens of the preexisting ideas. Infants learn that new objects can be grabbed in the same way of familiar objects, and adults explain the day's headlines as evidence for their existing worldview.

However, the application of standardized Piagetian theory and procedures in different societies established widely varying results that lead some to speculate not only that some cultures produce more cognitive development than others but that without specific kinds of cultural experience, but also formal schooling, development might cease at certain level, such as concrete operational level. A procedure was done following methods developed in Geneva (i.e. water level task). Participants were presented with two beakers of equal circumference and height, filled with equal amounts of water. The water from one beaker was transferred into another with taller and smaller circumference. The children and young adults from non-literate societies of a given age were more likely to think that the taller, thinner beaker had more water in it. On the other hand, an experiment on the effects of modifying testing procedures to match local cultural produced a different pattern of results. In the revised procedures, the participants explained in their own language and indicated that while the water was now "more", the quantity was the same. Piaget's water level task has also been applied to the elderly by Formann and results showed an age-associated non-linear decline of performance.

Relation to psychometric theories of intelligence
Researchers have linked Piaget's theory to Cattell and Horn's theory of fluid and crystallized abilities. Piaget's operative intelligence corresponds to the Cattell-Horn formulation of fluid ability in that both concern logical thinking and the "eduction of relations" (an expression Cattell used to refer to the inferring of relationships). Piaget's treatment of everyday learning corresponds to the Cattell-Horn formulation of crystallized ability in that both reflect the impress of experience. Piaget's operativity is considered to be prior to, and ultimately provides the foundation for, everyday learning, much like fluid ability's relation to crystallized intelligence.

Piaget's theory also aligns with another psychometric theory, namely the psychometric theory of g, general intelligence. Piaget designed a number of tasks to assess hypotheses arising from his theory. The tasks were not intended to measure individual differences and they have no equivalent in psychometric intelligence tests. Notwithstanding the different research traditions in which psychometric tests and Piagetian tasks were developed, the correlations between the two types of measures have been found to be consistently positive and generally moderate in magnitude. g is thought to underlie performance on the two types of tasks. It has been shown that it is possible to construct a battery consisting of Piagetian tasks that is as good a measure of g as standard IQ tests.

Challenges to Piagetian stage theory
Piagetian accounts of development have been challenged on several grounds. First, as Piaget himself noted, development does not always progress in the smooth manner his theory seems to predict. Décalage, or progressive forms of cognitive developmental progression in a specific domain, suggest that the stage model is, at best, a useful approximation. Furthermore, studies have found that children may be able to learn concepts and capability of complex reasoning that supposedly represented in more advanced stages with relative ease (Lourenço & Machado, 1996, p. 145). More broadly, Piaget's theory is "domain general," predicting that cognitive maturation occurs concurrently across different domains of knowledge (such as mathematics, logic, and understanding of physics or language). Piaget did not take into account variability in a child's performance notably how a child can differ in sophistication across several domains.

During the 1980s and 1990s, cognitive developmentalists were influenced by "neo-nativist" and evolutionary psychology ideas. These ideas de-emphasized domain general theories and emphasized domain specificity or modularity of mind. Modularity implies that different cognitive faculties may be largely independent of one another, and thus develop according to quite different timetables, which are "influenced by real world experiences". In this vein, some cognitive developmentalists argued that, rather than being domain general learners, children come equipped with domain specific theories, sometimes referred to as "core knowledge," which allows them to break into learning within that domain. For example, even young infants appear to be sensitive to some predictable regularities in the movement and interactions of objects (for example, an object cannot pass through another object), or in human behavior (for example, a hand repeatedly reaching for an object has that object, not just a particular path of motion), as it becomes the building block of which more elaborate knowledge is constructed.

Piaget's theory has been said to undervalue the influence that culture has on cognitive development. Piaget demonstrates that a child goes through several stages of cognitive development and come to conclusions on their own, however, a child's sociocultural environment plays an important part in their cognitive development. Social interaction teaches the child about the world and helps them develop through the cognitive stages, which Piaget neglected to consider.

More recent work from a newer dynamic systems approach has strongly challenged some of the basic presumptions of the "core knowledge" school that Piaget suggested. Dynamic systems approaches harken to modern neuroscientific research that was not available to Piaget when he was constructing his theory. This brought new light into research in psychology in which new techniques such as brain imaging provided new understanding to cognitive development. One important finding is that domain-specific knowledge is constructed as children develop and integrate knowledge. This enables the domain to improve the accuracy of the knowledge as well as organization of memories. However, this suggests more of a "smooth integration" of learning and development than either Piaget, or his neo-nativist critics, had envisioned. Additionally, some psychologists, such as Lev Vygotsky and Jerome Bruner, thought differently from Piaget, suggesting that language was more important for cognition development than Piaget implied.

Post-Piagetian and neo-Piagetian stages
In recent years, several theorists attempted to address concerns with Piaget's theory by developing new theories and models that can accommodate evidence which violates Piagetian predictions and postulates.

 * The neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development, advanced by Robbie Case, Andreas Demetriou, Graeme S. Halford, Kurt W. Fischer, Michael Lamport Commons, and Juan Pascual-Leone, attempted to integrate Piaget's theory with cognitive and differential theories of cognitive organization and development. Their aim was to better account for the cognitive factors of development and for intra-individual and inter-individual differences in cognitive development. They suggested that development along Piaget's stages is due to increasing working memory capacity and processing efficiency by "biological maturation". Moreover, Demetriou's theory ascribes an important role to hypercognitive processes of "self-monitoring, self-recording, self-evaluation, and self-regulation", and it recognizes the operation of several relatively autonomous domains of thought (Demetriou, 1998; Demetriou, Mouyi, Spanoudis, 2010; Demetriou, 2003, p. 153).
 * Piaget's theory stops at the formal operational stage, but other researchers have observed the thinking of adults is more nuanced than formal operational thought. This fifth stage has been named post formal thought or operation. Post formal stages have been proposed. Michael Commons presented evidence for four post formal stages in the model of hierarchical complexity: systematic, meta-systematic, paradigmatic, and cross-paradigmatic (Commons & Richards, 2003, p. 206–208; Oliver, 2004, p. 31). There are many theorists, however, who have criticized "post formal thinking," because the concept lacks both theoretical and empirical verification. The term "integrative thinking" has been suggested for use instead.

 * A "sentential" stage, said to occur before the early preoperational stage, has been proposed by Fischer, Biggs and Biggs, Commons, and Richards.
 * Jerome Bruner has expressed views on cognitive development in a "pragmatic orientation" in which humans actively use knowledge for practical applications, such as problem solving and understanding reality.
 * Michael Lamport Commons proposed the model of hierarchical complexity (MHC) in two dimensions: horizontal complexity and vertical complexity (Commons & Richards, 2003, p. 205).
 * Kieran Egan has proposed five stages of understanding. These are "somatic", "mythic", "romantic", "philosophic", and "ironic". These stages are developed through cognitive tools such as "stories", "binary oppositions", "fantasy" and "rhyme, rhythm, and meter" to enhance memorization to develop a long-lasting learning capacity.
 * Lawrence Kohlberg developed three stages of moral development: "Preconventional", "Conventional" and "Postconventional". Each level is composed of two orientation stages, with a total of six orientation stages: (1) "Punishment-Obedience", (2) "Instrumental Relativist", (3) "Good Boy-Nice Girl", (4) "Law and Order", (5) "Social Contract", and (6) "Universal Ethical Principle".
 * Andreas Demetriou has expressed neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development.
 * Jane Loevinger's stages of ego development occur through "an evolution of stages". "First is the Presocial Stage followed by the Symbiotic Stage, Impulsive Stage, Self-Protective Stage, Conformist Stage, Self-Aware Level: Transition from Conformist to Conscientious Stage, Individualistic Level: Transition from Conscientious to the Autonomous Stage, Conformist Stage, and Integrated Stage".
 * Ken Wilber has incorporated Piaget's theory in his multidisciplinary field of integral theory. The human consciousness is structured in hierarchical order and organized in "holon" chains or "great chain of being", which are based on the level of spiritual and psychological development.
 * Oliver Kress published a model that connected Piaget's theory of development and Abraham Maslow's concept of self-actualization. MaslowsHierarchyOfNeeds.svg
 * Cheryl Armon has proposed five stages of " the Good Life". These are "Egoistic Hedonism", "Instrumental Hedonism", "Affective/Altruistic Mutuality", "Individuality", and "Autonomy/Community" (Andreoletti & Demick, 2003, p. 284) (Armon, 1984, p. 40–43).
 * Christopher R. Hallpike proposed that human evolution of cognitive moral understanding had evolved from the beginning of time from its primitive state to the present time.
 * Robert Kegan extended Piaget's developmental model to adults in describing what he called constructive-developmental psychology.


text:
Talk:Khmer Rouge/Archive 3

Another page protection?
Very Verirly,

You will not get away with arbitrarily reverting the work of anyone else but me. After all, when I'm not a party in a dispute, **I** can intervene as an admin to stop the edit war. And I am not a participant in the Cambodia-related edit wars (my edits to the Cambodia-related pages have solely entailed adding past protection notices).

If you refuse to discuss your differences with Hanpuk directly, as opposed to griping about superficial behavioral red herrings on other users' pages, **I** will protect the page. BTW, I will not be acting in a capacity in which I can be accused of protecting "the wrong version" I will protect the most recent version of the page once the three revert rule has been violated, irrespective of whose version is protected. I'll will post this notice: This page is protected from editing until disputes have been resolved on the discussion page. 172 08:21, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

 * You're clearly not neutral in any conflict involving me. Hanpuk has simply reverted back to his version which had already been rejected by several users for reasons explained at considerable length by countless people. -- VV 08:25, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Really? The page histories say otherwise with respect to the Cambodia-related articles. Ironically, **Hanpuk** would be able to make the argument that I am biased against him in any conflict involving him. In the past Cambodia-related edit wars, I was usually (if not always—if my memory's correct) protecting the most recent stable versions, which tended to be the versions posted before Hanpuk had edited the pages, and thus the versions that you had been restoring over and over again. Lately, I haven't been seeing other admins bothering to go to such lengths to avoid charges of protecting "the wrong version." So, this time I'll protect the page on the version not posted by the first person who has broken the three revert rule. This is an objective formula for determining whose version gets protected, so I fail to see how I could possibly be charged with failing to act impartially. 172 08:38, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

This page must remain permanently protected, or at least until Hanpuk either goes away or is banned. Adam 08:49, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Well I am not going away, that's for sure. As far as being banned, I have not broken any Wikipedia rule, certainly nothing to get me banned.  It became obvious to me that VeryVerily and his little gang of friends, which includes yourself, had no interest in resolving anything having to do with this page or the other Cambodia pages.  Anyone can look through the edit history comments and discussions to see this.  Discussions being mostly me laying out many points, and VeryVerily and his group not bothering to for the most part, with "rv" as the edit comment, and little to not desire for discussion on talk pages.  So I followed Wikipedia procedure and listed this page on the Request for Comments page.  So I am not going away, and am not getting banned, thus according to you the only solution is to have this page permanently protected (and I would assume  at least four other Cambodia-related pages that cover the same ground would, in your view I'd imagine have to be protected permanently as well).  I would rather have Wikipedia procedure resolve this problem, but whatever happens happens. Hanpuk 23:44, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

There is no "Wikipedia procedure" for dealing with people like you who just want to insert propaganda into articles (in your case communist propaganda, but the problem usually arises with nationalist propaganda) other than permanent protection of the articles in question. So that is what will have to happen. If it doesn't, people will just go on reverting your garbage on sight. Adam 23:59, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Propaganda? The anti-CPK (e.g. on your side) scholar who wrote the first big anti-CPK book, Ponchaud, said two million died.  Now let's skip over whether this anti-CPK, e.g. taking the right wing side, person was correct or not.  Ponchaud himself said the number he gave started before the CPK takeover in 1975, while here it was said that the two million was 1975-1979.  You people can't even get the dates wrong from people on your own side.  The "communist propaganda" in this case was from an anti-CPK, anti-communist Catholic priest who you people can't even source correctly.  If anyone is inventing history, it is people who say that they tried to be reasonable and resolve this time and time again and I am being the unreasonable one.  A quick look through the discussion page here shows that the few times someone did explain a reversion, it was simply full of ad hominem attacks and the like like yours here.  I would prefer to stick to getting a page with true and facts and a NPOV instead of making ad hominem attacks, calling the contributions of people who source material garbage versus the ones who can't even get their own sources straight and so forth. Hanpuk 00:29, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

 * We have already provided you with several other sources unrelated to Panchaud; the case was painstakingly laid out on this very talk page. At this point many users are aware of your activities, so your attempt to whitewash the KR cannot succeed.  Just go away and bug one of the "non-crappy" Wikis Fennec told you about. -- VV 00:44, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

I actually removed the reference to Ponchaud, because his work wasn't very scientific, although there is no doubt he was broadly correct and deserves credit for drawing the world's attention to the Khmer Rouge atrocities. The current article gives more recent sources based on systematic research, but you continue to drag in this irrelevant canard about Ponchaud. This just demonstrates your intellectual dishonesty and propagandistic intent. And there is nothing "right wing" about setting out the full facts about the KR regime. Is mudering a million people somehow "left wing"? Adam 01:12, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

 * The so-called irrelevant canard about Ponchaud is that before I started editting this page, the sentence "Depending on the source a reported 15% to 40% of the population died between 1975 and 1979 (500,000 to 2,000,000 people)." appeared. The two million figure appeared in many news stories, almost all of them either referencing Ponchaud or referencing someone who referenced Ponchaud.  The only problem is that Ponchaud did not start the two million figure at the CPK takeover in 1975 but before that.  Ponchaud is anti-CPK, and in this case, people can't even get their own sides references straight.  That is why I use it as an example - whoever editted the page before took an anti-CPK piece of work, and went even beyond what that said, manufacturing the idea that these deaths started in 1975 so it could all be blamed on the CPK.  Also, the 2 million figure is not even sourced or footnoted, so it became up to me to discover it came from Ponchaud (and quickly spread throughout the media, any secondary source it is in was originally from him).  So the information was false, and did not even have a reference.  Anyone who wants to go to the library and pick up Ponchaud's book can see I am correct.  To my eyes these errors look like "propaganda", and me correcting them looks like setting the record straight.  All anyone has to do is crack open his book to know what he said.  I point all of this out to show that this concept that what I am writing is propaganda is false, I have been correcting errors.  Because of my prodding, I suppose a compromise (for now) without such an error is the current page now exists.  My point is that this accusation that I have been making propaganda here since I came is false and that is but one egregious example.

 * As far as the current page, which Adam Carr seems to want to focus on which is fine by me, there are a number of disputes. Within the page, should the Khmer Rouge be called by the name they gave themselves or by the slur attributed to them?  When the Vietnamese/Kampuchean fight started heating up, the people who left Cambodia for Vietnam were mostly ethnic Vietnamese.  VeryVerily wants to remove this information for some reason.  The incredibly non-NPOV picture of people executed under the CPK government is on the page.  If this is to remain, I would ask the person desiring it make a portrait of the people executed under the stead of the US Republican party be posted on that page - if it remains there, it can remain here, I think this is fair.  Or should it only be pointed out when slanty-eyed red gooks do it?  I mean, the people executed in the US are criminals!  The non-NPOV xenophobia is put here, as if the desire for the CPK to become autonomous and get the US who had been bombing them continually, or the French who had run a brutal colonialist regime was "xenophobia".  This is like saying French citizens who didn't like their Nazi occupiers were "xenophobic".  Then there are such things as saying the CPK did this or that "by force", "by gunpoint".  Is there any government that does not ultimately do whatever they do by gunpoint?

People pay rent to their landlords under the threat of government force and at gunpoint. Mentioning it here and not in hundreds of other places on Wikipedia is not NPOV. And so on and so forth. Of course, VeryVerily has shown he has no interest in any discussion of any of the issues. He seems to notice an edit not to his liking, look through that users history and he starts reverting leaving "rv" in the explanation and no discussion - anything more than that is a special gift. Thankfully, people have been limited to three reverts per day, I'll have to check if he is keeping to that. Hanpuk 14:36, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Agreed, that every government forces some behavior on the people, Hanpuk; it is, however, depended on _WHAT_ are the people being forced that differs the 'normal' governments from criminals. For example, few people would protest the traffic lights (though obedience to them is being 'forced', at gunpoint, if necessary), while the law requiring all women between 18 and 25 to have sex with the policemen (who would be allowed to force them to it whenever they wanted to) would probably be called as "inhuman", "tyrannic" and "violation of the essential human liberty". Similiarly, there IS a huge difference between forcing people to pay taxes and forcing them out of their homes for no compensation, and in the conditions that threaten their lives. Nobody sane would ever prohibit people from taking at least some of their goods along at the 'evacuation'. Critto

Deaths under the CPK
Hanpuk, you have yet to answer the questions on the History of Camodia talk page. You are the one who is challanging accepted history, and you are not providing evidence for this challange. All you've done is get angry about personalities and (for some reason) rail against Catholics. Your proof for these changes, listed two archives back, is by Noam Chomsky, a contentious figure in his own right.

 * Why is Chomsky singled out for this sort of abuse? I have not read the discussion on the "History of Cambodia" talk page, but Chomsky, whatever one may think of him, does cite his sources. A lot of things in "accepted history" are wrong, and it is far out of line to reject evidence on the sole grounds that the person offering it is "contentious". Shorne 18:46, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * As I stated (and you have ignored) in the History of Cambodia talk page:
 * ''   As I understand the accepted version of recent Cambodian history, VeryVeryly's edition is correct. Hanpuk needs to provide more sources if the article is to reflect his opinions. The briefest of searches across the Internet leads to estimates of the dead near or well above the million mark.
 * http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/cambodia_history.asp
 * http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/banyan3.htm
 * http://park.org/Thailand/MoreAboutAsia/cambodia/history.html
 * http://www.visit-mekong.com/cambodia/background/history.htm
 * http://www.newint.org/issue242/simply.htm

 * http://www.cambcomm.org.uk/holocaust.html''
 * You are trying to alter what is accepted history. This is fine, and why there are historians.  But, you must meet a high benchmark of proof to convince this community.  You've not done this yet.  I am going to revert parts of the page and continue to do so until you meet that high standard of proof. Rather than get upset, I suggest that you go about finding this proof before coming back here to change these series of articles again. Stargoat 15:49, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

OK, let's concentrate on the number of deaths before moving onto any other matters. In the section "The Khmer Rouge in power", paragraphs 2 and 3 deal with this. Adam Carr wrote both paragraphs. I have more of a problem with paragraph 2 than 3. Paragraph 3 at least gives references to what is being claimed, which paragraph 2 does not. Let's have a look-see - here is paragraph 2 and 3, I will be concentrating on 2:

"This policy, known as 'Year Zero', resulted in the deaths of a huge number of Cambodians through executions, overwork and starvation. The Khmer Rouge regime also systematically executed anyone with connections to the former government, professionals and intellectuals, and the ethnic Vietnamese population. The Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for the deaths of a higher proportion of its own country's population than any regime in modern history. The lowest estimates put the proportion who died at 10%. A more credible estimate is 20 to 25%, this achieved in only four years in power. The term democide is commonly applied to the Khmer Rouge's policies.

The exact number of people who died as a result of the Khmer Rouge's policies is debated. The regime which succeeded the Khmer Rouge claimed that 3.3 million had died, but this figure has little credibility. The CIA estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 people were executed by the Khmer Rouge, but executions represented only a minority of the death toll, which mostly came from starvation. Three sources, United States Department of State, Amnesty International and the Yale Cambodian Genocide Project, give estimates of 1.2 million, 1.4 million and 1.7 million respectively. R. J. Rummel gives a figure of 2 million. Former Khmer Rouge leaders Khieu Samphan and Pol Pot, who could be expected to give underestimations, give figures of 1 million and 800,000, respectively. An estimate of 1.5 million (from a total population of about 7 million in 1975) seems a reasonable consensus."

OK, "The Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for the deaths of a higher proportion of its own country's population than any regime in modern history. The lowest estimates put the proportion who died at 10%. A more credible estimate is 20 to 25%, this achieved in only four years in power." What are we being told here? That the CPK is responsible for anyone who died of malnourishment in Cambodia in 1975. The fact that people were dying of malnourishment prior to the CPK takeover (and that was while Cambodia was getting humanitarian aid, which was immediately cut off when the CPK took over). That American air force bombing drove farmers into the cities, thus their farms were left unplanted, and thus there was no food to feed the farmers or the people in the cities. Then, the CPK doing the most logical thing imaginable and getting people to grow their own food instead of starve is made to be insane. Most of the people who died either died shortly after the CPK takeover, or in the Cambodia border area shortly before the Vietnamese invasion. The lion's share of deaths were either related to the American bombardment and the cutoff of humanitarian aid in the beginning, or the border conflict that precipitaed the Vietnamese invasion in the end. I'm sure if the CPK had not sent farmers back to the farms, there would be accusations that they had starved millions of Cambodians to death by keeping them trapped in the cities like prisons. Whatever they do they lose in people dead-set against the people who liberated their section of Indochina from foreign colonialism and the puppets of foreign colonialists.

Anyhow, all blame for malnourishment deaths are laid at the feet of the CPK from the day they take power, the famine conditions they inherited, with the immediate cutoff of humanitarian aid preventing a famine previously being the icing on the cake. Then we hear that the lowest estimate of people who died solely due to CPK policy is 10% of Cambodia's population. A more "credible" estimate is 20-25%. According to who? This is all totally unsourced and presented as fact, with some omniscient narrator determining which deaths are due to CPK policy and which aren't. At least the paragraph afterwards gives some sources. The lowest estimate is not 10% either, certainly if the criteria is people who died solely due to CPK policy resulting in execution, starvation or overwork. On that basis, the lowest estimate is much lower. The third paragraph at least sources the material, the second paragraph where numbers are just invented, where some omniscient author has the ability to determine who died to CPK policy and who didn't, and it's a fact beyond dispute, and who knows which percentages are credible and which aren't - I mean, this is just junk. Hanpuk 17:53, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

 * There are certainly some problems in the text that could be addressed. But you must realize that your views run completely counter to the historical consensus, no matter how much you believe in them, and substantial sources back up that consensus, which you have only dismissively addressed.  (Your arguments thus appear to be "original research", and are not dissimilar in status to the Holocaust deniers.)  Furthermore you will not get anywhere if you (a) continue your personal attacks on me and Adam, (b) refuse to abide by the "common names" policy which states that the English encyclopedia should use the names used by and familiar to English speakers, and (c) do not acknowledge the points and responses made by several users, including me.  You are harming your own credibility and not getting anywhere in terms of changing the article.  (And your love for the Khmer Rouge is bizarre; I think what one anon wrote, "I suspect that what Hanpuk needs to do is actually go to Cambodia and visit the Documentation Center in Phnom Penh and one of the many killing fields to convince himself that these crimes did in fact take place. He would find it very convincing. Substituting ideological commitment and scepticism about the morality of the U.S. government for well established historical fact is politically immature", may be right on.) -- VV 21:31, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

 * You're the one making ad hominem attacks. I certainly don't harbour any love for the CPK (and, yes, that is their official name; there's nothing wrong with using it), but I have to say that Hanpuk made his points rationally, while you merely defended "the historical consensus" and threw personal insults about. Shorne 18:46, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hear, hear. Thanks to VV for saving me saying all that. My experience is that there are essentially two kinds of people editing history and politics articles at Wikipedia: those who want to write legitimate encyclopaedia articles, and those who want to write propaganda. Most of these are nationalists of various kinds, but old-time Stalinist apologists make up a significant minority of them. Hunpuk is evidently one of these. The only way to deal with these people is to revert them on sight, without disucssion, until they get bored and go and pester someone else. Adam 00:27, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

 * This doesn't even deserve an answer. Shorne 18:46, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * As far as the substantial sources you speak of that back this or that up, perhaps instead of being in the back they should come up front where we can see them. The second paragraph above (The 3rd in the "KR in power" section) points to sources while the first (2nd in the article "KR in power" section) has almost none, and is written in a much more unsourced, POV manner than the one after it.  It appears they were both written by Adam Carr - he writes a very sloppy, POV, unsourced paragraph, with one following that can at least be worked with.  The first (article 2nd) paragraph arguments appear to me to be "original research", at least as it stands.  I have sources for everything I write.  You keep making these general allusions about everything, but you are not specific about ANYTHING - "your views run completely counter..." (which views?) "substantial sources back up..." (then why aren't they in the article or a footnote?) "points and responses by several users..." (what points?).  Even the reference to naming is vague, but I know enough that this is probably regarding the name CPK or Khmer Rouge.  As far as personal attacks, that is the pot calling the kettle black, but I will disregard that beyond it as I am simply trying to make the Cambodia articles factual and NPOV.  As far as the points brought up by users, I am quite concerned with working with Stargoat as I was with The Anome before you began trying to poison the well with him by personal attacks on me including posts to his user page.  I don't know what correcting factual errors has to do with "love for the CPK".  As far as visiting sites, why go to sites in Cambodia where you say Cambodians were tortured years ago when I can go to Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay and see what American soldiers are doing right now? Hanpuk 04:46, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

You just can't help yourself, can you? That last remark reveals more beautifully than anything I or anyone else could do what your real priorities and agenda here are. Adam 06:05, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Again, more personal attacks. Anyone who parts ways with some ill-defined "historical consensus" must have ulterior motives. An impartial reader seeing this discussion would have to say that Hanpuk wins in a breeze. Shorne 18:46, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Quote:

 * The Khmer Rouge are generally held responsible for the deaths of at least a million people during their rule.

 * This statement does not belong at the top of the article. It is like saying at the top of an article on the Clinton administration in the US that "Clinton is generally held responsible for the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of children during his rule"—leaving the reader to suppose that Clinton ran around all day whacking heads off with a machete. It is entirely appropriate and desirable to mention deaths and other violence under the Khmer Rouge, but not in the form of a pot shot. Shorne 18:30, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * The opening paragraph to any in depth wiki article is a brief synopsis of the most important features and noteworthy aspects of a particular subject. The KR will always be remembered primarily for its brutality and genocide rather than any other feature of it. TDC 18:34, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

 * Then say that. Shorne 18:47, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * I will say that and more. TDC 19:00, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Autogenocide
I've reinstated the note of this word. The text merely says that this term is sometimes used, which it definitely is; I've seen it quite often. I tend to agree it has accuracy issues, but this is reporting usage, not endorsing it, and I don't see anything wrong with mentioning it. The Genocide article also notes the broader (but less canonical) use as "mass killings". -- VV 00:47, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Grrr. It's a very stupid usage, but if it's used I suppose we have to note it. However if the word exists it ought to be linked as autogenocide or autogenocide, rather than autogenocide , which is ugly and suggests it isn't a real word. Adam 07:50, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

rv 62.252.192.5's edit
Adam, why did you revert 62.252.192.5's edit?

Because this article is not a History of Cambodia. The date of the founding of the Cambodian monarchy and whether or not Lon Nol was backed by the CIA are not relevant to this article. The other points 62 makes are just rewordings of the existing text and add no new relavant information. Adam 04:11, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * One or two sentence background on the political situation for a political event isn't unreasonable. It adds to the article.  Of course, a reader should examine History of Cambodia, but the Khmer Rouge article doesn't make much sense without that prefunctory political introduction. Stargoat 04:16, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This is a good example of what I call everythingism, which is one of Wikipedia's main faults. Everythingism is the tendency for all articles to gradually expand both in size and in range of topics covered as users add more and more material each piece of which is increasingly irrelevant to the original topic, but is relevant to the most recent addition. If events in the 9th century are relevant to an article about the Khmer Rouge, what is not relevant? Unless this process in resisted, every article at Wikipedia will eventually be History and description of the universe. Adam 04:49, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * Thankfully, that isn't a threat here yet. The political background is a must, if the events of the rise of the Khmer Rouge are to be understood. Stargoat 10:39, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Khmer Rouge/Archive 3


text:
Norwegian railway signaling

The signalling system used on the rail transport in Norway is regulated by the Regulations of December 4, 2001 no. 1336 about signals and signs on the state's railway network and connected private tracks.

The first signalling system on the Norwegian railway system was a mechanically operated semaphore system introduced at Drammen station in 1893. The first electrically operated light signal system was delivered by AEG in 1924. Today, only electrically operated light signals are used.

Train radio
Between 1993 and 1996, NSB rolled out the analog train radio system Scanet. Developed by Ascom Radiocom, it was only installed on the primary railway lines. The system allows radio communication between a train dispatcher, and train drivers and other users involved in railway operations. Scanet was also connected to the automatic train control system. However, several lines lack the system, including the Arendal Line, the Flåm Line, the Meråker Line, the Nordland Line, the Rauma Line, the Røros Line, the Inner Østfold Line, the northern part of the Gjøvik Line, and several tunnels along the Bergen Line and the Sørland Line. The Åsta accident in 2000 spurred the need to give all parts of the railway coverage with train radio. On these lines, the dispatcher and drivers had to communicate using the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT 450) standard, a system which the operator Telenor discontinued in 2002.

Scanet was replaced by Global System for Mobile Communication – Railway (GSM-R) between 2004 2007, with the systems first being installed on the lines without Scanet. The system, delivered by Nokia Siemens Networks, was on time and on budget, and made Norway one of the first countries to fully implement the system throughout Europe. After GSM-R was fully implemented on 1 November, Scanet was gradually closed. The new system has been characterized as simpler to use and giving better audio quality than Scanet. The implementation cost 1.8 billion Norwegian krone and covers the entire network.

Means of signalling
The following means of signalling are used:

 * Signal flags
 * Hand-held signal lamps
 * Signal whistle
 * Arm signals
 * Fixed light signals
 * Fixed sound signals
 * Signal signs
 * Orientation posts
 * Locomotive whistle
 * Locomotive and train signal lamps

The fundamental meaning of the signal colors

 * Red always indicates "stop".
 * Violet indicates that the associated level crossing signal is showing "Stop short of the level crossing".
 * Yellow indicates "caution".
 * Green indicates "permission to run".
 * White indicates "clear line".

Light signals
Light signals show one of the following aspects:

Fail safe
If one of the green lights in signal 22 fails, the indication becomes the lower speed signal 21 – this is fail-safe. Other nearby countries reverse the role of the single green aspect and double green aspect.

Wrong-side failure
If the yellow light in signal 24 fails, the signal displays a higher speed indication, which would be a wrong-side failure. To prevent this, a current transformer in the lamp circuit monitors the current through the yellow lamp. If the yellow lamp fails, a relay will also switch off the green light and the signal becomes totally dark, which is then treated as "expect stop." A capacitor in the relay circuit ensures that the relay operation is a couple of seconds delayed, to prevent the relay operating for every blink. Hence, if the yellow lamp does suddenly fail, the green light will blink alone 1-2 times before it is switched off by the relay. Note: The animated picture of signal 24 is wrongly giving the impression that the yellow light is shown before the green one. This is not correct: The yellow and green lights are always switched on and off simultaneously, for every blink/flash.

Warning systems
Norway uses the Ericsson ATP warning system, also used on Perth's suburban railway network.

title: Norwegian railway signaling


text:
Folkland (Swedish provinces)

The Folklands (Folklanden) is the name for the original Swedish provinces of Tiundaland, Attundaland, Fjärdhundraland, and Roden (Roslagen) which in the 1296 united to form the province of Uppland. They were originally united by electing a common king who administered the sacrifices at Uppsala and who was the commander of the leidang during wars. It is not known when they united for the first time, but already in 98 AD, Tacitus described the Suiones as a powerful tribe.

Modern usage
The term Folkland, in the transferred sense of originally independent subprovinces, has by modern historians also been used to refer to the similar traditional provinces of the areas which later became the unified provinces of Hälsingland and Småland.

title: Folkland (Swedish provinces)


text:
Solax Studios

Solax Studios was an American motion-picture studio founded in 1910 by executives from the Gaumont Film Company of France. Alice Guy-Blaché, her husband Herbert, and a third partner, George A. Magie, established the Solax Company.

Guy-Blaché was artistic director and the director for many of the studio's films, while her husband Herbert managed production for the new company. They took over the studio Gaumont had built in Flushing, New York in 1908 for the production of Chronophone sound films, a venture which proved unsuccessful for Gaumont. Solax produced silent films in Flushing from October 1910 to the summer of 1912. Prospering, Solax invested more than $100,000 in a modern production plant in 1912 in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which had become the center of America's first motion picture industry.

This was a time when the American film industry was rapidly changing from little more than a scientific curiosity to an important sector of the economic engine driving the economy. In this environment, Solax was conceived as an all-in-one operation with its own film processing laboratory and state of the art stages built under a glass roof. In addition to administrative offices, production facilities included dressing rooms, a set-fabrication workshop, and a costume-design department with a sewing room.

In 1912, the studio made a short film titled A Fool and His Money, directed by Guy-Blaché. It is believed to be the first film ever made with an all-African-American cast. The film is now at the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute.

Metro Pictures (now MGM) began its business life in 1916 primarily as a distributor of successful Solax films. Several emerging stars appeared in Solax films including Lionel and Ethel Barrymore, Claire Whitney, Olga Petrova, and Billy Quirk.

In between their own productions, the Blachés leased the studios to other production companies such as the Goldwyn Picture Corporation and Selznick International Pictures. However, Solax and the rest of the East Coast film industry rapidly declined throughout the 1920s as a result of the phenomenal growth of motion-picture facilities in Hollywood, California that offered lower costs and a climate that accommodated year-round filming.

Inadequate firefighting methods resulted in the destruction of Solax Film Laboratories in Fort Lee, New Jersey in 1919.

title: Solax Studios


text:
Edward Williams

Edward, Ed or Eddie Williams may refer to:

Entertainment

 * Ed Williams (actor) (born 1926), American actor
 * Lil' Ed Williams (born 1955), American blues guitarist, singer and songwriter
 * Edward Williams (engraver) (c. 1755–1797?), English engraver
 * Edward Williams (painter) (1781–1855), English painter
 * Eddie Williams (saxophonist) (1910–1977), American musician
 * Eddie Williams (1912–1995), singer, see Johnny Moore's Three Blazers
 * Edward Williams (composer) (1921–2013), British composer
 * Edward Charles Williams (1807–1881), English landscape painter
 * Edward Christopher Williams (1871–1929), African-American librarian and author

Law

 * Edward Vaughan Williams (1797–1875), English judge
 * Edward Williams (Victorian judge) (1813–1880), judge from Victoria, Australia
 * Edward Bennett Williams (1920–1988), American lawyer and sports team owner
 * Edward Williams (Queensland judge) (1921–1999), judge from Queensland, Australia

Military

 * Edward Ellerker Williams (1793–1822), British Army officer
 * Edward Williams (British Army officer) (1892–1977), British Army officer and cricketer
 * Edward Thomas Williams (1901–1973), U.S. Army general
 * Alexander Williams (British Army officer) (Edward Alexander Wilmot Williams, 1910–1994), British general

Politics

 * Edward Williams (died c. 1594), member (MP) of the Parliament of England for Camelford, 1571, and for St. Ives, 1572
 * Edward Williams (died 1721) (1659–1721), English politician, MP for Breconshire
 * Ted Williams (politician) (Edward John Williams, 1890–1963), British politician and diplomat
 * Eddie Joe Williams (born 1954), American politician in Arkansas
 * Edward David Williams (1842–1909), member of the Parliament of Victoria, Australia
 * G. Edward Williams (1885–1940), American lawyer and member of the Mississippi Senate

American football

 * Ed Williams (running back) (born 1950), American football player for the Cincinnati Bengals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers
 * Edward Williams (American football) (born 1982), American football wide receiver
 * Eddie Williams (American football) (born 1987), American football fullback for the Washington Redskins and Chicago Bears

Other sports

 * Edward Williams (footballer) (fl. 1903–1905), soccer player
 * Edward Williams (rower) (1888–1915), British rower
 * Edward Williams (British Army officer) (1892–1977), English cricketer
 * Edward Williams (bowls) (1911–?), South African lawn bowler
 * Edward Williams (cricketer, born 1925) (1925–2013), English cricketer
 * Edward Williams (biathlete) (born 1942), American Olympic biathlete
 * Eddie Williams (baseball) (born 1964), American baseball player

Others

 * Iolo Morganwg (real name Edward Williams, 1747–1826), Welsh antiquarian
 * Edward Williams (iron-master) (1826–1886), iron-master and grandson of Iolo Morganwg
 * Edward Williams (businessman) (1843–1903), American businessman who co-founded Sherwin-Williams
 * Edward Williams (minister) (1750–1813), Welsh nonconformist minister, theological writer, and tutor
 * Edward Williams (antiquary) (1762–1833), English antiquary
 * Edward Marsh Williams (1818–1908), missionary, interpreter, and judge
 * Edward H. Williams (1824–1899), American physician and railroad executive
 * Edward Leader Williams (1828–1910), English engineer
 * Edward E. Williams (1945–2018), American economist
 * Edward Wyckoff Williams (born 1978), African-American author and political and economic analyst
 * Eddie Williams (activist) (1932–2017), black rights activist
 * Edward F. Williams (shipbuilder), American shipbuilder
 * Edward F. Williams (pilot boat), a 19th-century Sandy Hook pilot boat
 * Sir Edward Williams, 5th Baronet (1728–1804), Welsh landowner

title: Edward Williams


text:
Talk:Paul Begala

Job titles?
Can someone find out what actual positions Begala held in the Clinton campaign team and in the White House? Maybe a chronology of sorts? What would be even better would be to include large policy initiatives he was involved in (the health care proposal, e.g.).

Fetus?
"It should also be noted that on SNL he was likened to that of resembling an unborn fetus."

Does this belong in the article? I don't think so, thoughts? -- Jord 21:39 11 Oct 2004 UTC

I'm going to delete it

The fetus comment seems tacked on and feels like a lame partisan jab.

Go for it, dude! Ellsworth

Why delete the reference to SNL and the Begala Award? There is criticism for Begala being very partisan in the face of facts. There are lots of folks on both the left and right in that camp--but it is a legitimate point to make. I agree the actual lines from SNL (i.e., Matthews' fetus comment) are not appropriate.

Image
Is it just me, or does Begala appear to have an oddly shaped, bizarrely proportioned head? It looks like the screenshot was taken while he was staring into a funhouse mirror. Does anyone have a better likeness of this handsome, handsome man?KSchwartz 22:39, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

 * Indeed, the current photo is awful. I think the image was just squeezed at the sides, and it does make him look like an alien. -albrozdude 16:27, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

50 State Strategy
"What he has spent it on, apparently, is just hiring a bunch of staff people to wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their nose." - May 11th, 2006 on CNN

Mr Begala has expressed concern at the costs of operating Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy, an initiative to fund and organize candidates for the Democratic Party in every single state in the Unites States. His critics interpreted his words as though he didn't think that the Democratic Party should bother funding for candidates in areas that have had strong Republican support.

http://www.westerndemocrat.com/2006/05/50_state_strate.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zack-exley/shame-on-you-paul-begala_b_21116.html

He later attempted to clarify that he supports the 50 State Strategy but has expressed concern at the costs of supporting it. He outlined the possibility that this could risk leaving the Democratic Party with insufficient funds to counter the impending aggressive media campaign that is expected from the Republican Party for the 2006 Senate Elections in November.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-begala/bringing-a-knife-to-a-gun_b_21275.html --ShadeOfWhite 23:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Is he married?
You simply must tell us! Moncrief (talk) 03:41, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

intro is incorrect (?)
The intro to this article states "the first Democrat to win the White House in sixteen years". This isn't correct, is it? Carter left office on 01/20/1981 and Clinton took office on 01/20/1993, which is 12 years. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.167.230.63 (talk) 20:28, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Carter won in 1976. Clinton won in 1992. That's sixteen years.69.181.41.173 (talk) 21:01, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Paul Begala. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070930210058/http://www.dailytexanonline.com/media/paper410/news/2004/04/19/TopStories/Sg.Helps.Foster.Future.Leaders-664368.shtml?norewrite&sourcedomain=www.dailytexanonline.com to http://www.dailytexanonline.com/media/paper410/news/2004/04/19/TopStories/Sg.Helps.Foster.Future.Leaders-664368.shtml?norewrite&sourcedomain=www.dailytexanonline.com
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051208054747/http://www.tpmcafe.com/author/begala to http://www.tpmcafe.com/author/begala

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 00:25, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

title: Talk:Paul Begala