Knowledge and Development: Volume 1 Advances in Research and Theory PDF
Preview Knowledge and Development: Volume 1 Advances in Research and Theory
KNOWLEDGE AND DEVELOPMENT Volume 1 Advances in Research and Theory KNOWLEDGE AND DEVELOPMENT Volume 1 Advances in Research and Theory Edited by Willis E Overton and Jeanette McCarthy Gallagher Temple University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania PLENUM PRESS • NEW YORK AND LONDON Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Knowledge and development. Includes bibliographies and index. CONTENTS: v. 1. Advances in research and theory. 1. Cognition. 2. Cognition (Child psychology). 3. Developmental psychology. I. Overton, Willis F. II. Gallagher, Jeanette McCarthy, 1932- [DNLM: 1. Cognition. 2. Child development. WSI05 K73J BF311.K6385 153.4 76-26163 ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-2549-9 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-2547-5 001: 10.1007/978-1-4684-2547-5 © 1977 Plenum Press. New York Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1977 A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation 227 West 17th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher Contributors Michael J. Chandler, Department of Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York Gerald Gratch, Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Houston, Texas Frank H. Hooper, Child and Family Studies Program, University of Wis consin, Madison, Wisconsin Barbel Inhelder, Faculte de Psychologie et des Sciences de ['Education, Uni versite de Geneve, Geneva, Switzerland Lynn S. Liben, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Penn sylvania Jean Piaget, Faculte de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education, Universite de Geneve, Geneva, Switzerland Nancy W. Sheehan, Child and Family Studies Program, University of Wis consin, Madison, Wisconsin v Foreword From an informal group of a dozen faculty and graduate students at Temple University, the Jean Piaget Society grew in seven years to 500 members who have interests in the application of genetic epistemology to their own disciplines and professions. At the outset Piaget endorsed the concept of a society which bore his name and presented a major address on equilibration at the society's first symposium in May, 1971. Had he not done so the society would no doubt have remained a small parochial group, like so many others throughout the country, interested in Piaget and his theory. With the encouragement of Genevans and the leadership of its first four presidents, Lois Macomber, Barbara Press eisen, Marilyn Appel, and John Mickelson, the society undertook a number of programs to collect and disseminate the results of scholarly work in genetic epistemology. Particular emphasis was placed upon applications of Piaget's theory to developmental psychology, philos ophy, and education. One of these programs was the publication of an annual series on the development of knowing, of which this volume is the first. In 1973, the society asked Hans Furth with the assistance of Willis Overton and Jeanette Gallagher to initiate and plan a series of yearbooks with the result that in addition to this volume, a second volume on education was commissioned, and a third one on the decalage issue was planned. The subsequent volumes in this series will include not only contribu tions by psychologists on the nature of knowing and its development but contributions by philosophers, historians, anthropologists, lin guists, and others who have adopted perspectives, whether critical or supportive, of a genetic epistemological interpretation of what consti tutes knowledge and what it means to know something. The topics of future volumes, while not limited to the particular vii viii Foreword views of any single person, will be devoted to the explication and exten sion of the position that our understanding of knowing and knowledge is advanced by an analysis of their development and history, their structural organizations, and their construction by active human minds. December, 1976 FRANK B. MURRAY President, The Jean Piaget Society Preface The present volume includes two theoretical contributions by Pia get and five reviews of current research in the areas of the development of concepts of chance and probability, infancy, social cognition, memory, and aging. In the first chapter Piaget addresses the question of how we are to explain the order and novelty found in biological and cognitive develop ment. The traditional popular mechanical answer to these questions has been given by the neo-Darwinian model of chance variation and selec tion. Monod has argued that the selection of one form or another is not a chance occurrence but an active choice that results from teleonomic or regulative activity. Piaget supports this position but argues that it should be extended to include "chance" variations or novel forms as well as selection. Piaget maintains that variation is not a mere trial and error with seiection following. Rather, variations are the products of directed activity of the whole, "which controls at the same time the per formances as 'trials' and their selection as 'choices'" (p. 6). In his second chapter Piaget examines the role of action in the de velopment of thinking. In the first part of the chapter he discusses the relation between two types of knowing activity: figurative, which aims at describing the world, and operative, which is transformational in nature. Piaget explores various types of figurative aspects of knowing, including perception and imagery, in order to demonstrate that these are not sufficient to account for thought processes or concepts (operative aspect). This provides the basis for the second part of the chapter in which Piaget argues that the operations of thought derive from the organism's actions upon objects, and he summarizes the course of this develop ment. In this discussion he elaborates the distinction between physical experience and logical-mathematical experience. ix x Preface A theme that runs through Piaget's chapters and through his work in general is that knowledge is not a copy of some independent reality imposed upon the subject, but rather, it is an active construction of the subject in interaction with the world. This theme is continued through the present volume particularly in the chapters by Inhelder, Gratch, Chandler, and Liben. Barbel Inhelder raises the constructionist theme by addressing the question of whether the child's concepts of chance and probability could derive directly from his observations. Through a series of research studies she answers this question in the negative and suggests that chance and probability are understood by the child in the context of his logical-mathematical operations. Gerald Gratch's chapter on the development of the object concept during infancy highlights the controversy between those who maintain that the young infant is aware of a world of permanent objects and Piaget's view that the infant must construct such permanent objects, in stages, through sensorimotor activity. Gratch analyzes the research literature in two parts. The first part examines studies of infants less than six months of age. These studies have generally been motivated by the assumption that the infant already has a world of object perma nence. The second part explores studies of infants older than six months. These studies have been generated either by efforts to support Piaget's position or to criticize it from an empiricist perspective. In his review of research in the field of social cognition Michael Chandler begins from the constructionist theme and goes on to an important holistic aspect of Piaget's theory. This aspect maintains that affect and thought, social and physical, subject and object, are not dis crete components but points of special emphasis within the realm of knowing. Chandler employs this perspective to analyze the work of researchers who have generally oriented themselves toward either the objective pole (person perception and social sensitivity studies) or the subjective pole (egocentrism and decentering studies) of the whole of subject-object interaction. Lynn Liben's chapter on research in memory development also starts from a constructionist position. She reviews studies which bear upon the hypothesis, originally put forth by Piaget and Inhelder, that memory is dependent on the status of the child's cognitive structures. Included are some of the issues related to memory improvement versus memory regressions. Liben also explores the question of the locus dur ing the encoding, storage, retrieval process that structures may influ ence memory. The chapter concludes with a comparison of Piaget and Inhelder's cognitive approach and other theories of memory. Preface xi The final chapter by Frank Hooper and Nancy Sheehan examines research on the status of logical concepts during the aging years. Hooper and Sheehan are particularly concerned with the question of the type of model which will best handle the cognitive changes of the adult and aging years. One suggestion the authors find promising is a compe tence-performance distinction which in essence asserts that logical mathematical structures or competence maintain a relative stability across the later years while specific task behaviors become increasingly susceptible to socio-cultural and situational determinants. The preparation for the series and the production of this volume were facilitated by a number of people. The board of directors of the Jean Pia get Society and particularly past presidents Marilyn Appel and John Mickelson were a source of continuing support. Carolyn Hegeler and Gail Mickelson provided important typing assistance. Judy Horn blum gave valuable editorial help and compiled the index. Finally, the authors who, in addition to being respected scholars, also proved to be sensitive to issues of time schedules and open to suggestions for revision made the task of preparation a pleasurable one. Contents Chapter 1 Chance and Dialectic in Biological Epistemology: A Critical Analysis of Jacques Monod's Theses Jean Piaget 1. Discriminative Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 2 2. A Hereditary Linguistic Nucleus? ........................... 3 3. A Cybernetic Perspective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 4 4. An Active Choice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 5 5. The Role of Chance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. 6 6. An Ordered Series. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 6 7. The Role of the Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 7 8. The Sources of Knowledge ................................. 8 9. Logical-Mathematical Experience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 9 10. Phenocopies .............................................. 9 11. The Problems of Innateness ................................ 11 12. A Negation of Constructivism .............................. 12 13. Monod and Meyerson ..................................... 13 14. The Dialectic of Nature ..................................... 13 15. Death Is Not the Inverse of Life ............................. 14 16. An Ordered System of the Whole? .......................... 14 17. Compensatory Regulations ................................. 15 References .................................................... 16 Chapter 2 The Role of Action in the Development of Thinking Jean Piaget 1. The Figurative and Operative Aspects of the Cognitive Functions ................................................. 17 xiii
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