Use of Piaget's Theories of Child Development in Analyzing, To Kill a Mockingbird

When I read the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, I was, like most people, first impressed by the father Atticus Finch who has also been regarded as a moral icon in America since the book had been published. Even Obama has claimed that he wanted to be an Atticus of modern America. But when I reread this book, I was addicted to the two kids who were brought up by Atticus Finch alone as their mother had died early. The 2 kids, the elder brother Jem and his 4 years younger sister Scout, after the almost same experience, have got quite different responses towards it, and have got some different changes, which seems as if the 4-years gap do have some magic in this novel. I tried to find some relative researches, but unfortunately have got no results. Then I read the Piaget's theory of cognitive development and found it can be used to explain my puzzle and can also provide a new idea to help readers understanding the novel and its values better. Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence first developed by Jean Piaget. To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of biological maturation and environmental experience. Children construct an understanding of the world around them, and then experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment. Piaget’s views about the nature of intelligence and then a description of 4 stages through which it develops until maturity. The first stage is the sensorimotor stage (from birth to the acquisition of language), the 2nd is the preoperational stage (age 2 and lasts up until the age of 7), the 3rd is the concrete operational stage (the ages of 7 and 11 years) and the 4th is the milestones of the concrete operational stage (age 11/12 to adult). According to Piaget’s theory, I put Scout and Jem into their own stages and finally got some ideas of what