Development During Middle Childhood The Years From Six to Twelve (1984) / Chapter Skim
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3 Cognitive Development in School-Age Children: Conclusions and New Directions
3 Cognitive Development in School-Age Children: Conclusions and New Directions
Pages 70-146
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From page 70... ...
In this chapter we review major conclusions from both traditions about cognitive development in school-age children. The study of cognitive development, especially in school-age children, has been one of the central focuses of developmental research over the last 25 years.
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From page 71... ...
Four that seem especially prom' ising to us involve the relationship between cognitive development and emotional dynamics, the relationship between brain changes and cognitive development, the role of informal teaching and other modes of social interaction in cognitive development, and the nature ant! effects of schooling and literacy.
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From page 72... ...
For example, in pretend play the understanding of concrete social roles, such as that of a doctor interacting with a patient, emerges at a certain point in a developmental sequence for social categories and is usually present by the age at which children begin school (Watson, 1981~. Likewise, the understanding of conservation of amount of clay develops at a certain point in a developmental sequence for conservation.
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From page 73... ...
When steps are defined abstractly and in broad terms or when large groups of skills are considered, developmental sequences seem to show universality across domains and across children in different social groups. When skills of any specificity are considered, however, the numbers and types of developmental steps seem to change as a function of both the context and the individual child (Bullock, 1981; Feldman and Toulmin, 1975; Fischer and Corrigan, 1981; Roberts, 1981; Silvern, 19841.
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From page 74... ...
, and theorists have hypothesized the emergence of an additional developmental level between ages 2 and 6 one involving simple relations of representations. The major controversy among the various structural theories seems to be whether this level is in fact the beginning of Piagetian concrete operations or a separate reorganization distinct from concrete operations.
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From page 75... ...
Indeed, performance on Piaget's formal operations tasks even continues to develop throughout adolescence (Martarano, 1977; Neimark, 1975~. A number of theorists have suggested that a fourth level develops after the beginning of formal operations-the ability to relate abstractions or hypotheses, emerging at age 14-16 in middIe-cIass Western children (Biggs and Collis, 1982; Case, 1980; Fischer et al., in press; Gruber and Voneche, 1976; Jacques et al., 1978; Richards and Commons, 1983; Selman, 1980; Tomlinson-Keasey, 19821.
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From page 76... ...
Nevertheless, a few studies have expressly assessed individual differences, and their results indicate that different children and different situations do in fact produce different sequences (Knight, 1982; McCall et al., 1977; Roberts, 19811. A plausible hypothesis is that developmental sequences are relative, changing with the child, the immediate situation, and the culture.
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From page 77... ...
Depending on how these sequences are analyzed, they can demonstrate either commonalities or individual differences that is, that both children move through the same sequences or that each child moves through a different sequence. When viewed in terms of the specific steps each child traverses, the figure shows different developmental sequences.
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From page 78... ...
An interaction between a doctor and a patient is equivalent structurally to the interaction between mother and father at step 3, since both interactions involve a social role relation between two categories. When cognitive-developmental theorists posit general developmental levels, they are defining developmental sequences even more abstractly in terms of highly general, structural classes of behaviors.
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From page 79... ...
These questions are just beginning to be addressed in a sophisticated manner. Processes of Development Many of the questions about the nature of developmental stages, their universality, and the extent of individual differences would be substantially clarified by a solid analysis of the processes underlying cognitive development.
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From page 80... ...
emerges and quickly pervades the mind, catalyzing change in most or all of the child's schemes. Consequently, when a 6-year-old girl develops her first concrete operational scheme, such as conservation of number, the logical structure of concrete operations should pervade her intelligence in a short time, according to Piaget's model.
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From page 81... ...
Although analysis of behavioral organization is always difficult, the distance between the minimal structure in short-term memory and the complex structure of a behavior such as conservation or perspective-taking seems to be particularly difficult to bridge. How can a linear numerical growth in memory be transformed into a change from, for example, concrete operational to formal operational perspective-taking skills (Elkind, 19741?
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From page 82... ...
Yet it is far from obvious that any such incompatibility exists. The process of automatization can have powerful effects on developing behaviors, and at the same time children can show general reorganizations in those behaviors (Case, 1980~.
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From page 83... ...
Approaches that explicitly include both organism and environment in the working constructs for explaining developmental processes may provide the most promise for future research. THE CENTRAL ISSUES IN THE FIELD TODAY The differences among the traditional approaches to development are important to understand, but they seem much less significant today than they did 10 years ago.
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From page 84... ...
A Diagnosis Why has the study of cognitive development repeatedly fallen back on approaches that focus primarily on either the child or the environment? Why have developmentalists failed to build approaches based on the colt laboration of child with environments Historically, developmental psychology has been plagued by repeated failures to accept what should be one of its central tasks: to explain the emer' gence of new organization or structure.
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From page 85... ...
differentiated many different types of assimilation but generally spoke of accommodation in only global, undifferentiated terms. Similarly, the structures behind Piaget's developmental stages concrete operations and formal operations in school-age children-were treated as static characteristics of the child.
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From page 86... ...
It is in such practical tools that the proposed remedy lies. To promote interactional analyses, a framework needs to affect the actual practice of cognitive-developmental research.
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In this way, developmental change occurs both inside the child and outside her an often overlooked fact to which we will retum. In much human behavior there is indeed a collaboration between two or more individuals.
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From page 88... ...
For example, a tree that has strong branches far down on its trunk provides strong support for climbing, a tree with only high branches provides less support, and a pole with no branches provides little support.
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From page 89... ...
To determine the contribution of environmental characteristics, behavior was assessed uncler three different conditions, which were designed to provide varying degrees of support for advanced performance. In a structured condition the elicited-imitation assessment a separate task was administered to test each predicted step in the developmental sequence.
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From page 90... ...
However, a major change occurred beginning with the first step testing the developmental level of simple relations of representations (which typically emerges at approximately age 41. At this step most children performed at a higher step in the structured assessment than in the two more spontaneous conditions, and that gap grew systematically in the later steps in the sequence.
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From page 91... ...
The developmental sequence involved the moral concepts of intention and responsibility. It was predicted that at the cognitivedevelopmental level of formal operations (also called "single abstractions")
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From page 92... ...
Also, children evidence large individual differences in the facility with which they can generalize an ability to new contexts, thus demonstrating variations in the competence to generalize. Upon the emergence of formal operation, for example, very bright children seem to be able to use their new capacity quickly in a wide range of tasks, whereas children of normal intelligence take much longer to extend the capacity to many tasks (Fischer and Pipp, 1984; Webb, 1974~.
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From page 93... ...
Behavioral development has not proved to follow the "obvious" categories devised by developmentalists. Second, the general movement toward integrating diverse approaches and dealing with the whole child leads not only to an emphasis on the colIab' oration of child and environment but also to the consideration of relations between behaviors in the traditional categories: How does emotional development relate to cognitive development?
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From page 94... ...
Because these questions are so general and fundamental, their applicability is not limited to the traditional domain of cognitive development increments in knowledge about "cold" topics, such as objects, space, and scientific principles. All behavior, including that involving "hot" topics, such as emotions and social interaction, is organized in some way and undergoes developmental change.
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The relationship between brain growth and cognitive development is an exciting topic worthy of research, as we discuss later. It is important, however, that researchers differentiate what they are measuring from other developmental changes.
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the child's emotional reactions to the divorce, (3) the types of social interactions between parents and child and the changes in those interactions that resulted from the divorce, (4)
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From page 97... ...
Developmental sequences demonstrate not only developmental change but also a form of developmental continuity. They describe how one type of behavior gradually changes into another, and scales based on sequences can be used to examine when change is relatively gradual and continuous and when it is relatively abrupt and discontinuous.
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From page 98... ...
These analyses clearly demonstrate that the older groups performed better than the younger ones-hardly a surprise. The results document little else of interest, failing even to test directly for any developmental sequences.
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From page 99... ...
However, it is not possible to test directly the hypothesized three~step developmental sequence (from nonconservation to conservation with explanation) within each type of conservation, because with the specified design of the study the steps are not assessed independently.
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From page 100... ...
(2) Individual differences in developmental sequences can be directly tested, especially when separate assessments are used to detect hypothesized differences (Knight, 1982~.
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From page 101... ...
We know of no large-scale research projects on school-age children that have used such sophisticated methods to assess developmental change. Rule-Assessment Methods Developmental sequences are a central concern in cognitive research, but an emphasis on the relations of behavior across contexts highlights the centrality of a second, related issue: the generality or breadth of applicability of a skill or scheme.
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From page 102... ...
Though the concept of"rule" was controversial two decades ago, today it provides a basis for one of the most promising approaches for exact specification of the cognitive structures underlying child performance. Indeed, it also promises more generally to provide a powerful too!
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From page 103... ...
What seems to be required is the construction of a framework that expressly integrates methods for examining large-scale developmental changes, such as the general developmental levels, with approaches for analyzing particular rule systems. Toward this end, a straightforward approach would combine the use of developmental scales to analyze broad-scale patterns with the use of rule-assessment methods to analyze particular sets of tasks included in those scales.
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From page 104... ...
the role of social interaction, especially informal teaching, in cognitive development; and (4) the nature of schooling and literacy and their effects on cognitive development.
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From page 105... ...
The emotions dealt with social interaction categories such as "nice" and "mean." Her main measures required children to act out stories involving these categories, and the conditions for acting out the stories provided varying degrees of environmental support for advanced performance. She also employed a structured interview designed to provide a strong-scalogram test of the developmental sequences she had predicted.
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From page 106... ...
The development of categories for social interactions and personality descriptions appears to follow the same sequence outlined for emotions (Fischer et al., in press; Harter, 1982; Rosenberg, 1979; Selman, 1980~: 1. Preschool children seem to be able to deal with only one concrete category at a time or with a simple relationship between closely related categories, such as that indicated in the statement, "If you are mean to me, will be mean to you." 2.
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From page 107... ...
With the emergence of simple relations of representations at approximately age 4, there appears to be a surge of new emotions accompanying the new understanding of social roles in the family. The emotions described in Freud's (1909/1962)
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From page 108... ...
Psychoanalysis remains one of the most fertile sources of hypotheses about emotional development. Although researchers have generally neglected psychoanalytic ideas about emotional development, especially for the school-age child, a resurgence of interest is evident.
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From page 109... ...
Research on Emotions One of the reasons for the lack of research on emotional reorganizations and Freudian processes has been that it has proved to be difficult to determine how to investigate them. Research with seriously disturbed children is particularly difficult to do, and the induction of strong emotions in children for research purposes is unethical.
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From page 110... ...
Clearly, a full analysis of emotional development will require study of these components (Campos et al., 19831. Relations Between Brain Changes and Cognitive Development It is a truism in developmental science that changes in the brain must be central to cognitive development, yet researchers have mostly neglected investigation of the relationship between brain and cognition in development.
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From page 111... ...
Children can learn new skills during periods of brain growth spurts, it has been claimed, but they cannot leam during periods of slow growth (Epstein, 1978, 1980; Toepfer, 19791. Thus, for example, children between ages 12 and 14 are said to be unable to leam new skills, because brain growth shows a plateau rather than a spurt during that period.
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From page 112... ...
For both head circumference and the electroencephalogram, for example, brain growth shows a spurt one to three years after the first cognitive changes reflecting concrete operations: Concrete-operational skills are first evident as early as age 5.5-6, but brain spurts do not usually appear until age 7-9. One reasonable hypothesis is that small behavioral changes typically precede any global brain changes of the type measured by head circumference and the electroencephalogram.
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From page 113... ...
seems to have best anticipated the guided reinvention perspective. For Vygotsky, an analysis of modes of social interaction is essential for explaining cognitive development.
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From page 114... ...
Thus, the hierarchy synthesizes social learning theorists' observations about the effects of modeling on reaming rate (Bandura, 1971) and Vygotsky's observations about the hierarchically layered nature of social interaction (see also Dennett, 1975; Premack, 1973~.
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From page 115... ...
Guided Reinvention Within Dyadic Goal-Directed Activity The most intensive basic research on naturally occurring social-interactive modes as vehicles for guided reinvention (outside classrooms) has occurred in the field of language development (Brown, 1980; Bruner, 1983; Bullock, 1979; Cross, 1977; Kaye, 1982; Kaye and Charney, 1980; Lock, 1980; Moerk, 1976; Snow, 1977; Swensen, 1983; Wells, 1974~.
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From page 116... ...
of their child's current preferences, skills, and world knowledge, which they continuously update and check (Brown, 1980; Kaye, 1982; Nelson, 1973; Snow, 19771. Embedded Teaching and Formal Schooling It would certainly be misleading to say that language is not taught, but the type of teaching uncovered in these naturalistic studies of language development is unlike that found in most formal schooling.
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Here, disembedded teaching means any teaching that departs significantly from guided rein' vention. On the basis of available research, two characteristics of guided reinvention seem particularly critical: (1)
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From page 118... ...
At every level of the convergence rate hierarchy, the child's development depends on the contributions of others in immediate social interaction. In parametric research on what makes educational computer games attractive, contingency on the child's behavior in essential (Malone, 19811.
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From page 119... ...
Only then can we be certain that it will develop not as a matter of hand and finger habits but as a really new and complex form of speech. The Effects of Schooling and Other Literate Practices One of the most promising new directions for cognitive-developmental research concerns the cognitive effects of literacy and formal schooling (Cole end Bruner, 1971;ColeandGriffin, 1980;Goody, 1977;Luria, 1976;Olson, 1976; Ong, 1982; ScriLner and Cole, 1981; Vygotsky 1934/19781.
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From page 120... ...
Our treatment of literacy effects necessarily begins with the problem of definition, because there are many literacies and each may have distinctive cognitive-developmental effects. The range of literate practices is analyzed in terms of how each functions in mental life.
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From page 121... ...
C Systemic Analysis 8.
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From page 122... ...
Characterizing the Range of Literate Practices The literate practices in Table 3-4 are divided into three groups: amplification, nonlocal integration, and systemic analysis. These labels are meant to capture qualitative differences in how literate practices seem to function in the cognitive life of individuals and to suggest directions for research on literate practices.
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From page 123... ...
Nonlocal integration is certainly not unique to literate practices. Under aliterate conditions it would seem to occur primarily in social interactions in which communicating individuals try to reconcile disparate schemes.
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Nonlocal integration promotes the building of conventionalized representational systems, and systemic analysis involves the evaluation of those systems. It seems that literate practices provide strong support for the ability to consider such systems and to analyze and compare them.
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From page 125... ...
These limitations make it relatively easy for literate peoples to abstract the concept of a representational system. Methods for Assessing the Cognitive Effects of Literate Practices If this characterization of the functioning of literate practices in mental life is correct, most traditional methods for assessing literacy effects will need to be revised.
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From page 126... ...
In particular, many literates have little exposure to the literate skills most critical to the modern knowledge explosion the practices that institutionalize nonlocal integration and systemic analysis. Figure 34 shows the range of conditions needed to assess the cognitive effects of literate practices in children or adults.
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From page 127... ...
Also, subjects should be tested on a range of types of task, as shown in the left column. Many of the effects of literate practices will remain obscure if only basic cognitive abilities are assessed.
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From page 128... ...
This property of formal schooling appears to be a product of literate practices. In all likelihood the very idea of a domain of knowledge and the disembedded teaching it encourages are two sides of a coin that could only be minted in a literate culture.
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From page 129... ...
There has also been a growing emphasis on constructing and using methods and statistics that allow direct tests of cagnitive-developmental hypotheses, in place of traditional methods and statistics, which often do not allow appropriate tests. A Portrait of the Capacities of the School Age Child The cognitive capacities that develop during the school years do not develop in stages as traditionally defined.
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From page 130... ...
Cognitive developmentalists have often assumed that all children move through the same general developmental sequences, but research suggests that such generality occurs at best only for the most global analytic categories, such as concrete and formal operations. With more specific analyses, it seems that children will demonstrate important differences in developmental sequences.
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From page 131... ...
Social development and cognitive development have typically been treated as distinct categories, and there has been little research on the contributions of social interaction to cognitive development. The few studies in recent years on this topic suggested that social interaction plays a central role in
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From page 132... ...
Analysis of this process has been almost completely neglected in school-age children, despite the fact that many of the failures of school~based education seem to result from the ways that classroom procedures diverge from the norm of guided reinvention. Schooling and the literate practices associated with it seem to produce major extensions of human intelligence.
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From page 133... ...
1971 Developmental stages and developmental processes.
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From page 134... ...
New Directions for Child Development, No.
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From page 135... ...
1962 Growth in head circumference from birth through young adulthood. Child Development 33:257-271.
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From page 136... ...
Cognitive Psychology 2:421-453. 1972 An analysis of cognitive~developmental sequences.
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(Original work published 1924.) 1909/ Analysis of a phobia in a five-year-old boy.
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From page 138... ...
1982 The Development of Concepts of Social Interaction: Children's Understanding of Nice and Mean. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Denver.
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From page 139... ...
In W Damon, ea., New Directions for Child Development: Moral Development.
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From page 140... ...
1977 A developmental analysis of performance on Piaget's formal operations tasks. Developmental Psychology 13 :666-672.
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From page 141... ...
1980 Social Interaction and Cognitive Development in Children. London: Academic Press.
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From page 142... ...
Richards, and C Armon, eds., Beyond Formal Operations: Late Adolescent and Adult Cognitive Develop?
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From page 143... ...
1981 Developmental sequences within and between concepts. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 46(2, Serial No.
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(Original work published in 1934.) 1962 1934/ Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes.
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From page 145... ...
1979 From social interaction to higher psychological processes: A clarification and application of Vygotsky's theory. Human Development 22:1-22.
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New Directions for Child Development, No.
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