neo-Piagetian Theory Research Articles

Strategy choice and strategy discovery

This article summarizes a number of recent findings and ideas concerning how children choose among existing strategies and how they discover new ones. Across a wide range of domains, individual children use diverse strategies. In all of these domains, they choose adaptively among the alternative approaches. Consistent individual differences are present within the strategy choices of both middle and lower class populations, and these predict performance on standardized achievement tests. The ideas about strategy choices have been formalized within running computer simulations that produce performance much like children's both in terms of performance at any one time and in terms of changes over time. The article concludes with a description of recent work on how children discover new strategies and with a discussion of the relation of the present perspective on cognitive development to that embodied in traditional Piagetian and neo-Piagetian theories.

Generative aspects of manipulation in tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella).

Evaluating the cognitive and ontogenetic bases of tool use in primates requires comparative data on the generative nature of manipulation, including the frequency and variety of combinations of actions and objects. Thirty-one tufted capuchins (Cebus apella) of 3 age groups devoted significant proportions of time to interaction with objects and substrates. Activity that combined an object with a substrate occurred often; activities that combined 2 portable objects were less frequent. Predictions drawn from neo-Piagetian theory of an ontogenetic link between combinatorial behaviors and the onset of tool use were not supported. The frequency and generative nature of capuchins' manipulative activity, particularly acts combining objects and substrates, could account for their proclivity to use tools. The use of tools by capuchins need not involve the representational abilities proposed by neo-Piagetian theory.

Equilibration and the Learning Paradox

Piaget’s term <i>equilibration </i>refers to the process that makes possible the qualitative changes characteristic of stage transitions. Such a construct is necessary in any developmental theory that must account for qualitative changes. Without it, a theory involves a learning paradox. Two neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development are contrasted to illustrate the necessity of a construct such as equilibration and the paradoxical consequence that results when such a construct is rejected. Pascual-Leone offers a functional explanation of Piaget’s developmental construct and thereby avoids a learning paradox, while Case rejects equilibration and must face the paradox.

Neo-Piagetian Theories and Then Some

Neo-Piagetian Theories and Then Some

The relationship between M-demand, algorithms, and problem solving: A neo-Piagetian analysis

One of the most important implements developed by the neo-Piagetian theory is task analysis, that is, the evaluation of the M-demand of a problem. M-demand can be defined as: maximum number of steps that the subject must mobilize simultaneously in in the course of executing a task.

Cognitive and social development in the second year of life: A Neo-Piagetian perspective

Using Case’s Neo-Piagetian theory, the cognitive and social development of the child in the second year of life is investigated. In a longitudinal repeated measures design, using cognitive and social tasks, 18 mother-infant pairs were studied in respect to the transition period from the first (sensorimotor) stage to the second (interrelational) stage. Results strongly support the prediction that a new stage of development is achieved between the ages of 18 and 22 months in both the cognitive and social domains. It is suggested that functioning in other domains such as language, affect, visual-spatial and fine and gross motor skills be examined to determine whether similar transition occurs in such areas.

Reflections on 25 Years of Piagetian Cognitive Developmental Psychology, 1963–1988

In this article some of the issues are examined that have arisen in one quarter of a century of intensive research on cognitive development from a Piagetian perspective. It is suggested that there is no evidence clearly confirming the existence of Piaget’s cognitive structures in explicit form. Consequently, neo-Piagetian theories have proliferated, in an attempt to conceptualize the increasingly powerful cognitive systems that have been observed to develop with age. Research on the object concept indicates that children have knowledge and skills that would not have been predicted by the Piagetian position, but that children progressively develop an integrated conception of space that is consistent with some of Piaget’s basic tenets. Some of the major studies purportedly demonstrating understanding of concrete operational concepts by 3- and 4-year-olds are shown to be based on false positives. There is rigorous evidence of hypothesis testing in middle childhood, but this performance does not necessarily entail formal operations as defined by Inhelder and Piaget. It is concluded that Piaget’s empirical work has held up better than is often thought but that his conceptualization of cognitive development is inadequate. Consequently, it is suggested, empirical researchers should devote more attention to testing alternative theories.

Using the Partial Credit Model to Investigate Responses to Structured Subtests

This article applies the partial credit model to an assessment situation in which items (termed "superitems" by the developers) have been constructed as subtests sharing a particular set of stimulus materials and according to a neo-Piagetian theory of learning (SOLO). Comparison is made with Guttman scaling, a nonprobabilistic approach. The complementary nature of results from a dichotomous Rasch analysis and the polytomous partial-credit analysis is explored.

Toward a neo-Piagetian theory of cognitive and emotional development

In the present article, a view of children's emotional development is articulated that is consistent with, and which seems necessary to supplement, current neo-Piagetian theories of intellectual development. The basic assumption is that cognition and emotion are generated by different systems, each of which is necessary to normal functioning, and which together produce the structures that are characteristic of normal human development. On the basis of this assumption, it is hypothesized that any change in one system will have a concomitant or subsequent effect on the other. In particular, it is hypothesized that the arrival at a new cognitive-developmental stage will influence (A1) the types of emotions children are likely to experience, (A2) the types of situations in which they are likely to display these emotions, and (A3) the nature of the control structures they can develop for dealing with these situations and/or the emotions they elicit. At the same time, and reciprocally, it is hypothesized that exposure to certain specifiable emotional situations will have the potential to influence (B1) the amount of time children spend in epistemic activity, and hence their rate and terminal level of cognitive development, (B2) the particular directions in which they channel their epistemic activity, and hence their cognitive-developmental profile or their cognitive style, and (B3) the efficiency of their basic cognitive processes, either general or specific. The paper concludes with three preliminary tests of these hypotheses. The first study tests hypotheses A1 and A2 by examining the emotional responses of children at different cognitive stages to a situation where their mother ignores them for another child (either a newborn baby or a peer). The second study tests the same two hypotheses longitudinally, by examining infants' emotional reactions to a brief separation from their mother as they approach and then pass into a new stage of cognitive development. Finally, the third study tests hypotheses B2 and B3, by assessing the cognitive development of children who are either emotionally disturbed or normal, and who either have or have not experienced the death of a loved one at an early age.

Relation between M space of students and M demand of different items of general chemistry and its interpretation based upon the neo-Piagetian theory of Pascual Leone

The objective of this study is to establish a relation between M-space of students and M-demand of different items in general chemistry.

Classification in Children: Two Developmental Information-Processing Models

Two different theories (Pascual-Leone's and Keating's) of information processing capacity development allow predictions about subjects' performance in some classification tasks. M-space and its interaction with cognitive style are constructs of Pascual-Leone's neo-Piagetian theory, evaluated here together with a micromodel for classification problems, consistent with the same theory, proposed by Morra. Keating and Bobbitt maintain that cognitive processes can be divided in phases; their construct of efficiency in the "operation" phase is evaluated. Subjects are 40 6-year-olds, selected out of 76. Predictions drawn from Keating and Bobbitt's model are falsified most likely because of the inadequacy of models based on subtractive analysis of reaction times. Predictions from Pascual Leone's theory are almost wholly confirmed. However, some unpredicted (but compatible) data raise the problem of a rediscussion of the "schema" construct, proposed by Piaget and incorporated in the neo-Piagetian theory.

Schema Theory and Practice Variability Within a Neo-Piagetian Framework

Schema theory and neo-Piagetian theory were combined to explain psychomotor performance of female children. A curvilinear repositioning task was employed to test motor recall of a novel response. Results indicated support for the schema theory postulation of symmetry of motor memory across varying spatial locations. High M-processors performed significantly better than low M-processors, supporting the tenets of neo-Piagetian theory. It was concluded that a combination of the two theories offers a viable beginning in the understanding of children's psychomotor performance.

A Developmental Explanation For Children’s Motor behavior

Two experiments were conducted to test the application of Pascual-Leone's (1970) neo-Piagetian theory for explaining children's acquisition of skill in a curvilinear positioning task. Two groups of children (late pre-operational 6 yr olds and early concrete 8 yr olds) were identified and from each group 10 low M-processors and 10 high M-processors were selected (total n=40) through use of the Children's Embedded Figures Test. The 6 yr olds were administered 2-and 3-scheme curvilinear positioning tasks while the 8 yr olds performed 3-and 4-scheme tasks. The difference between the two experiments was the nature of the positioning tasks, i.e., one task allowed visual processing of information, while the other did not. Both experiments supported the neo-Piagetian predictions of structural mental space as explaining the developmental nature of motor skill acquisition, and functional mental space as explaining individual differences within stages in children's performance.

M-space: Is it a constraint on conservation reasoning ability?

Eighty-two children (ages 4.4 to 6.5 years) were administered a Backward Digit Span test to measure M-space and four conservation tasks (number, substance, continuous quantity, and weight). Based upon a neo-Piagetian theory of intellectual development proposed by Pascual-Leone (unpublished dissertation, 1969) two hypotheses were tested. (1) A significant relation should exist between a child's M-space and his ability to conserve; (2) children should not conserve when the number of “figurative schemes” required to solve the task exceeds their M-space. Significant partial correlations were found between M-space and number and between M-space and continuous quantity (age held constant). However, M-space did not correlate significantly with substance or weight. As predicted, none of 11 children with M-spaces of e + 1 demonstrated conservation. Contrary to theoretical predictions, a substantial number of children with M-spaces of e + 2 conserved all four quantities. It is argued that it may be possible to retain the idea of M-space as a constraint on reasoning ability if theoretical statements regarding the number of required figurative schemes are modified.

Failure of conservation training of disadvantaged black teenagers: a neo-Piagetian interpretation.

From a structural point of view, conservation tasks resemble Witkin's field-dependence situations. According to our neo-Piagetian theory, therefore, the failure of certain disadvantaged black teenagers to profit from conservation training may be related to their field dependence.

Mental strategies, mental capacity, and instruction: A neo-Piagetian investigation

Pascual-Leone's neo-Piagetian theory of development was used to predict the pre- and postinstruction distributions of scores on a subject-controlled digit placement task as a function of three parameters: (1) the mental strategy which subjects attempted to apply, (2) the demand which attempting to apply this strategy placed on their mental capacity, and (3) the maximum mental capacity which they were capable of mobilizing. The predicted and obtained distributions corresponded quite closely for each kind of strategy at each age level sampled (6, 8, and 10). The discussion focused on the methodological and analytic requirements which must be met if the same approach is to be applied to making successful predictions in more naturalistic paradigms.