Fischer

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Ann. Rev. Psychol. 1985.36:613-48 Copyright 1985by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved
STAGES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Kurt W. Fischer
Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado 80208
Louise Silvern
Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80302
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... CONTEXT FORRESOLUTION OF THE CONTROVERSY ................................ Developmental Plasticity ........................................................................ Lifespan Study..................................................................................... CONCEPTUAL OBSTACLES IN BASICASSUMPTIONS .................................. Organismic-Structural Approaches andUniversal Stages ................................. Mechanistic-Functional Approaches andIndividual Differences ......................... Overcoming the Conceptual Dichotomy ...................................................... EVIDENCE FOR STAGES ......................................................................... Empirical Criteria................................................................................ Consensus on Levels............................................................................. EVIDENCE FOR ENVIRONMENTALAND ORGANISMIC FACTORS AFFECTING LEVELS ...................................................................... Environment ....................................................................................... Organism ........................................................................................... INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN DEVELOPMENTAL SEQUENCE S AND OUTCOMES .......................................................................... CONCLUSIONS: BUILDING AN INTEGRATED APPROACH ............................ 614 615 615 616 617 618 621 624 626 626 633 636 636 638 640 642
Adilemma that has obstructed the pursuit of satisfactory explanations of human behavioris that, on the one hand, there appears to be sufficient constancyof behavior across variable environmental conditions to warrant the inference that explanation requires the introduction of dispositional concepts (e.g. schemes,operations, structures, rules); on the other hand, 613 0066-43 08/85/0201-0613502.00
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behavior is also variableamong individuals to the pointthat explanation requiresthe specification of environmental determinants. Frequently, investigators have sought to resolve the dilemma bydenying or trivializingoneor the otherof its components (Overton Newman 1982,p. 217).
INTRODUCTION
Doescognitive development occur in universal, discontinuous stages, structural reorganizations that are common to all people everywhere and that characterize all domainsof development?Or is cognitive developmentcontinuous and discrete, with all people showingdifferent developmental patterns as a function of their learning histories and with no uniform sequence of stages across domains? Unfortunately, the debate about stages and individual differences in cognitive development is typically cast in dichotomous terms similar to these. Wehave phrased the arguments baldly, of course, but manyof the debates in the literature fit this characterization. Hundreds of studies have been designed to demonstrate stages, with little or no attempt to assess individual differences or environmental effects. Hundreds have been designed to demonstrate environmental effects or to examineindividual differences without any assessment of stages. Of course, there have always been a few exceptions to the isolation of research on stages fromthat on individual differences and environmental effects, but it has generally held. Developmental scientists have begun to express dissatisfaction with this traditional dichotomization and with the concomitant isolation of research traditions (e.g. Baltes et al 1980, Feldman1980, McCall1981, Block 1982, Higgins & Eccles 1983, Kesscn &Scott 1983, Rest 1983, Cole et al 1984, Fischer & Bullock 1984, Gollin 1984a, Silvern 1984; R. J. Lerner & M. B. Kauffman, unpublished manuscript). The data demonstrate that both positions are valid. Cognitive development showsevidence of stage-like change and of consistency across domains; at the same time, environmental effects and individual differences abound. A frameworkis needed that explains howboth types of developmental patterns can occur. Because the evidenceis strong for both arguments,the fault mustlie in the dichotomousnature of the arguments. Several intellectual threads in present-daylife sciences virtually necessitate abandonment of such dichotomouswaysof thinking. These threads are particularly evident in the biology of developmental plasticity and in the psychology of lifespan development, and so those will be reviewedbriefly. Transcendingthe dichotomizationof stages and individual differences also requires understanding its foundations in certain basic assumptionsabout the nature of development, as encapsulated in organismic and mechanistic models, and these too will be reviewedbriefly. Withthis background, presentation of the findings on the nature of cognitive development will be straightforward. Whatis the evidence for stages? Whatis
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the evidencefor variability in stage as a result of environmental or organismic influences? Whatis the evidence for individual differences in cognitive development? Resolution of the controversy, we argue, requires a framework that conjoins organismand environmentby building transactional or collaborational models of stages and individual differences. That is, the childs development is seen as arising from a combination of organismic and environmental variables, and major explanatoryconstructs are recast in these explicitly conjoint terms. Finally, a wordis necessaryabout the scopeof this chapter. We have chosen to review stages and individual differences in cognitive development, not cognitive developmentmoregenerally. Still our topic is broad, and we have had to omit many appropriate research areas, theories, and articles. Apologies to our colleagues whom we have been unable to cite. CONTEXT FOR RESOLUTION OF THE CONTROVERSY
Developmental plasticity and lifespan development provide particularly clear examples of the sources of current dissatisfaction with the traditional dichotomy. In these areas, scholars have concluded that developmentboth occurs in stages and shows great individual diversity, and so they have frequently appealed for integration of stages and individual differences.
DevelopmentalPlasticity
Definitions of developmentalplasticity all share a theme: that development varies in response to environmentalvariation (Gollin 1984b, Lerner 1984). The phenomena of what is often called "maturation" showremarkable diversity, and at the same time, the diversity is constrained by the organization of developmental stages. Consequently,the concept of maturation itself is being recast to reflect findings that stages and individual differences occurtogether. Theroots of the conceptof developmental plasticity lie in behavioral biology, ethology, and embryology(Gottlieb 1973, 1983, Gould 1977, Movshon Van Sluyters 1981). Those literatures illustrate that members of the same species developingin different contexts may vary dramatically not only in such strongly canalized behaviors as those of aggression and sex (Harding&Strum 1976, Moore 1984) but also in gross morphology and physiology (Gould 1977). Human beings who develop at very high elevations, for example, developphysiologically in waysthat wouldcause death in other settings (Gould & Lewontin 1979). Such enormous variability in developmentalcourse and outcomebrings into question the very meaningof "species typical" developmentalpath. Maturational status does constrain the possible effects of the environment on further development (Gollin 1981, Lerner 1984), but the concept of organic maturation
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itself has changed.A useful construct for maturationis probabilistic epigenesis (Gottlieb 1973, 1983). Developmental norms reflect not what must happen development but what is typical (i.e. probable) under the usual environmental and organismicconditions. Inevitably there will be variations. In probabilistic epigenesis, individuals function differently in different contexts, and that functioning influences subsequent structures, which in turn influence subsequent functioning, and so on. Thus, given differing contexts, the same initial structural conditions will produce different developmental sequences and outcomes. So manyfactors at so manydifferent levels jointly affect an organisms condition (e.g. genetics, neuroanatomy,physiology, behavior, environmental context, social group organization, and for people, cultural organization). The nature of the factors and the relations among them changeduring development. Variations at each level condition the impact of any one variant uponfurther development (Gollin 1981, Scarr & McCartney1983). The sheer number variable factors and relations among factors determinesthat within a species the course of development will be probabilistic. Species differ in the plasticity of their development, and human beings are presumed to be unusually plastic (Gould1977). It is not surprising, then, that argumentsfrom the developmental plasticity literature have begunto appear in discussions of humandevelopment (e.g. Kagan 1982, Thomas1982, Chess Thomas1983, Silvern 1984). Theremainderof this review rests not on an analogy with other biobehavioral processes but on analyses of cognitive developmental data and theories. The point of discussing the plasticity literature is that contemporary conceptionsof maturation strongly support the effort to eliminate dichotomous thinking about stages and individual differences. The literature on the biology of developmental plasticity calls into question the root metaphor (Reese&Overton1970) used in traditional structural modelsof stage development--that the organismunfolds along a predeterminedcourse (Overton 1984) or through a predetermined epigenesis (Gottlieb 1973, 1983). Developmentalists should not assumethat predetermined epigenesis is based upon good biological evidence. If, for example, the functions and morphologyof sexual reproduction manifest dramatically different developmentalcourses in differing contexts (Gould1977), then human cognitive developmentmayalso showsuch individual differences. At every stage, maturingstructure provides opportunities for individual differences as well as constraints upon them (Gollin 1981, Scarr & McCartney 1983).
Lifespan Study
Theportrait of development in the biological literature is similar to that in the literature on psychological development across the lifespan. Maturation shows
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a common overall pattern and at the same time progresses in importantly different waysfor different individuals in different contexts (Chess &Thomas 1983, Lerner 1984). Withinthe lifespan orientation, the psychological differences betweenwidely different age groups highlight the stage-like aspects of development. Onthe other hand, the consistent differences in the development of individuals over long periods and the relations of those differences to personaland socie_tal history accentuatethe importanceof individual diversity. In general, research on development over long periods in children and adults demonstratesbig differences betweenage groups as well as substantial differences betweenindividuals within age groups (Horn 1976, McCallet al 1977, Vaillant 1977, Mussen et al 1980).Bothsets of differences are significant. It is misleading to speak in terms of stages without also noting the wide range of individual differences in development, and it is misleadingto speak in terms of individual differences without noting the commonalitiesthat occur across individuals. Scholars taking a lifespan perspective have often objected to the emphasis in traditional stage theories on a uniformdevelopmental sequence. Their observations seem to demanda view that development proceeds through diverse sequences (Lerner 1984). Factors that affect the diversity they observe cognition include not only age-related abilities but also cohort differences (Baltes et al 1980), domainsof interest and expertise (Crosson& RobertsonTchabo1983), and other historical and experiential differences. Furthermore, the lifespan literature suggests that the salience of individual differences generally waxeswith age after early childhood, while that of stage-related uniformities wanes(Cairns ct al 1980, McCall1981, Chess &Thomas 1983, Scarr &McCartney1983, Lerner 1984). After early childhood, individuals function in ever morediverse contexts, and they also showincreasing diversity in howthey select and manage those contexts. CONCEPTUAL OBSTACLES IN BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
"Development doesnotlurk directly in the population(s) studiedbut residesfundamentally in the perspective used" (Kaplan 1983, p. 196). "Observation of phenomena that lookcoherent, similar,or unitary to oneobserver may lookdifferential,unrelated, or specific to another, largely because of what each means by same o~"different.... " (Selman 1980, p. 19). The research literatures on developmentalplasticity and lifespan development both hold that diversity in developmental sequencescoexists with a maturational coursethat conditionsthe possibilities for that diversity. What is still needed, however,is a formal analytic modelof this coexistence--a conceptual integration of stages and individual differences.
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A crucial barrier to such an integration is that traditional frameworks for studying development have effectively defined either stages or individual differences as irrelevant (Toulmin 1981, Kaplan 1983, Overton 1984; R. J. Lerner & M. B. Kauffman, unpublished manuscript). Inevitably, a priori assumptionsand definitions have influenced the methodsof study and the types of evidence taken as bearing upon questions of universality or diversity. Consequently, researchers in one tradition have found evidence for universal stages, with individual differences occurring only in the rate of progress through the stages. Researchersin the other tradition have found a plethora of environmental influences and individual differences, with no stages in evidence except for limited developmentalorderings within particular task domains.. Twomodels have engendered these incompatible approaches to development (Reese &Overton1970): the organism model, emphasizingstructure, and the mechanism model, focusing on function (Fischer & Bullock 1984). Scholars working in the organismic-structural tradition find that development occurs in universal stages, whichreflect the structure of thought that lies behindthe diversity of manifest behavior. Scholars workingin the mechanistic-functional tradition find development (or more commonly, learning) in manifest behavior, which varies widely across diverse environmentsand functions. Observations madeby the methodsof the one approachare easily discounted as irrelevant by proponents of the other. An integration of stages and individual differences requires a conceptual liberation of the observations from the two sets of incompatibleand exclusionary a priori assumptionsabout the nature of development.Whatis neededis a view fully groundedin the fact that cognitive developmentappears diverse under someobservational conditions and universal under others. Weargue here that all cognitive assessments depend on both a context and a particular stage-related cognitive structure. The methodsprescribed by organismic and mechanistic approachessimply hold constant the context or structure, respectively, or they ignore it. Witha framework that integrates stages and individual differences, it will be possible to specify (a) conditions that will produce stage-like development with few individual differences and (b) conditions that will produce diverse behaviors with no evidence of stages. Before we can elaborate an alternative, however,we must consider more fully recent discussions of the two approaches. Organismic-Structural Approaches and Universal Stages The organismic approach takes the growing biological organism as its root metaphor(Reese & Overton1970). Growthunfolds toward its species-specific adult form, and developmentis the necessary sequence from initial to adult form. Identifying a developmental sequencetherefore requires an initial deter-
mination of an end point for the sequence and then a rational analysis of the changesthat are necessary for development from the beginningto the end point (Kaplan 1983, R. Kitchener 1983, Kohlberget al 1983). Withinthis tradition, end points are defined broadly, with observedvariations treated as developmentally equivalent. By analogy, an acorn normally develops into an oak tree; differences in the shape of the branches, the distribution of the leaves, or the brittleness of the wood are unimportant.Any oak-like form is taken to be the end point, and any developmentalsequences that result in that formare consideredequivalent. Thegoal is the explanationof species-wide progression, which is thought to require a level of analysis different from the explanation of diversity among individuals. Typically, organismicapproacheshavetaken as their end point the structure of adult thought, such as Piagets (1970) formal operations. According Overton(1984), a structure is a relatively stable, organized configuration principles or rules revealedby rfftional analysis to accountfor relatively stable waysof functioning. To be useful, a structural analysis mustaccountfor a wide diversity of behaviorswith relatively fewrules. Consequently, the end point is definedin terms of similarity across overtly diverse behaviors,and the diversity is usually not analyzed. A developmental sequenceinvolves a series of progressive structures culminating in the structure of the end point, as in Piagets sequence of sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages. The structural sequence,it is argued, is logically necessaryfor the specified end point, just as it is necessarythat an oak growin sequence fromacorn to sapling to adult tree, and not the reverse. Anearlier developmental state constitutes a prior stage only whenit mustprecede some later stage. When alternative states can occur at a given point in the sequence, they are considered equivalent variants of the samestage. Such manifest altematives are not considered true changes in the stage sequence itself. Indeed, Kaplan (1983) warnedagainst seeking confirmation for universal stage modelsin empirical observation, because, he said, sequences are ideal, rational constructions based upon the definition of the end point. When Piaget (1957) hypothesized that each stage is a structured whole (structure densemble), he took to its extreme the assumption that uniform structures underlie manifest diversity. According to his hypothesis, the structure that characterizes a stage has a gestalt-like quality that rapidly takes over the mind, as if it werea pervasivecatalyst producingchangein diverse schemes throughout the mind (Fischer & Bullock 1981). Consequently, differences the domainor context of a behavior should be irrelevant to assessment of structured wholes. The child should showwhat Kohlberg and his colleagues (1983) call "hard stages." Furthermore,potential sources of differences betweenor within individuals
cannot count as causes of developmental sequenceor structure. Material causes such as physiological variation and efficient causes such as context and task influences cannot induce the characteristics of a developmentalsequence but can only affect the speed of developmentthrough the sequence (Gollin 1981, Lerner 1984, Overton 1984). Within this framework,the only accepted cause of cognitive stages is the form or structure of thought. As part of the dismissal of varying material and efficient causes in favor of universal structural (formal) causes, Piaget (1952 [1936]) distinguished between development and learning. Developmentinvolved the structuring of true knowledge, and learning involved behavioral changearising from material or efficient causes. Learning, he concluded, was equivalent to the acquisition of circus tricks by animals or children: Children are not altered developmentally when they are trained to recite the Declaration of Independence. B roughton(1981) concludedthat Piagets theory is logically compelledto disallow any impact of organismicor environmentalvariations, as is any other theory that explains thoughtby its structure. Variablefactors, such as mother-infant attachment, defensive style, and motive, are consigned to explaining only nondevelopmentalvariations, including individual differences. Piaget (1971, 1975) himself eventually cameclose to acknowledging the limitations of this position whenhe said that his theory only dealt with the epistemic subject, the ideal philosopher-child who was not influenced by factors such as context or motive. The psychological subject remained for others to explain. Accordingto this approach, then, the possibility of diverse sequences is ruled out a priori. The observations that most cogently argue for individual differences in kind of developmentalsequence (rather than merely in rate of progress or stage of fixation) are considered irrelevant. The possibility of diverse end points is ruled out by the a priori stipulation of a single end point, whichis described sufficiently abstractly to subsumediversity. Diverse sequencesare ruled out by the structured-whole formulation and the proposition that the sequence itself is logically necessary. Theseassumptions, which are often implicit, inform research designs and methodsthat effectively preclude the detection of individual differences or environmentalinfluences. For example, measures are used that assess only one developmental sequence and consequently cannot uncover any diversity in sequence; or the ages of the children tested are varied, but there are no variations in the testing conditions. In the face of the need to explain developmentonly in terms of universal structures, context-sensitive variations have often been acknowledged by identifying performance as the site of individual differences and contrasting it with competence, which is presumedto develop through structural stages (Chomsky 1965, Flavell & Wohlwill 1969, Overton & Newman 1982). Despite the enormousvariations evident in performance, competencedoes not vary. True
STAGESANDINDIVIDUALDIFFERENCES 621 developmentis maintained as a closed structure within the organism. Oneof the origins of this approach is the literature on intelligence testing, where competence is defined as the best score a child can obtain, whereasperformance involves variations belowthat score arising from motivational and contextual factors. In the competence/performance models, however,the distinction is no longer merelypractical but theoretical. Competence is identified with structure, and it is competence alone that showstrue stage-like development. A persons competenceat a single point on the developmentalscale defines a stage. Apparent variations in stage are said to be producedby performance factors, which do not involve structures. For competenceto be evident in performance,it must somehow be activated or primed. The concept of activation is necessarybecauseof the conceptualisolation of structures fromvariable performance and must be taken on faith. Indeed, a general criticism of performance-competence models is that, like the organismic and mechanistic approachescombined in them, they ultimately maintain the conceptual isolation of universally developing structures from immediate organismic and environmentalvariations (Bullock 1981). Scholars recently haveexpresseddissatisfaction with stage theorys ultimate neglect of almost all interesting developmental differences among individuals or cultures (Baltes et al 1980, Feldman1980, Toulmin1981, Gilligan 1982, Thomas 1982, Higgins & Eccles 1983, Snarey et al 1983, Cole et al 1984, Fischer & Bullock 1984, Gollin 1984a, Leruer 1984, Silvern 1984). The central complaintsboil down to two: (a) The approachrules out consideration of too much observabledevelopmental variation. (b) The approachis too greatly constrained by the values inherentin a specified, out-of-contextdevelopmental end point. When outcomes that are effective in their own contextsdo not fit the specific end point, their effectiveness is ignored and they are categorizedas immature. In general, intelligence is presentedas a virtually closed systemthat canbe assessed withoutconsiderationof contextual influences. On the other hand, the payoffs of the approach are the converse of the complaints. A universal developmentalsequenceprovides a criterion for finding similarities and a basis for comparingdevelopmentacross contexts and cultures (Edwards 1983, Silveru 1984). It also preserves a meaningfulcriterion for development amid the diversity of behavior (Kaplan 1983). Most fundamentally, the organismic-structural approachemphasizes that not all things are possible in development, that certain cognitive changes must precede others, and that only someenvironmentalvariables are capable of affecting cognition at a particular point in development. Mechanistic-Functional Approaches and Individual Differences
The root metaphor of the mechanistic perspective is the machine (Reese Overton 1970). Developmentalchange cannot occur without impact from the
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environment--i.e, from efficient causes. Development is caused and variably shaped by environmental factors. Lawfulnessresides in the principles that associate independentvariables (efficient causes, primarily) with dependent variables, not in the internal structural consistency of the organism(Catania 1973, Kessen &Scott 1983). With its emphasis on the variable nature of environmental influences, the mechanistic approach readily explains individual differences. In contrast to the organismicdefinition of development in terms of structure, mechanistic approaches are concerned primarily with learning or problem solving, not with development.The principles of conditioning provide one of the central mechanistic explanations for changes in behavior (Skinner 1969). All such principles explain behavioral changein terms of particular functions that are served by the change, such as the achievementof specific events or states sought by the organism. A number of information processing theories fit the mechanistic-functional framework,specifying, for example, howa child builds a productionsystemto achieve a particular goal---e.g, to solve a problem or obtain a desired object (Klahr &Wallace 1976). Individual differences are a central focus of mechanistic-functional approaches.Suchperspectives hold that context affects behaviorvia the principles of learning or problemsolving and that behavioral change(i.e. development)is as variable as its context. Development is assessed in terms of manifest behavior in particular tasks within specific contexts. Feworganismic constraints on developmentare acknowledgedexplicitly, although researchers have cometo recognize that species characteristics do constrain what can be learned (Schwartz 1983). According to this perspective, there is no structural end point that defines the course of development,and there is no straightforward criterion by which to judge developmentalstatus as more or less mature (Kaplan 1983, Snarey et al 1983). Instead, the primary criterion for learning or development is achievement of a specific function or purpose in a particular context. For example, does the 2-year-old boy succeed in feeding himself? Doesthe 8-year-old girl obtain sufficient peer recognition for her accomplishments at school? If the specified function is effectively served by the behavior, then learning or development has been successful. Investigators using this framework do not search for developmentalchange as construedby the structuralists. Children are not described as moving through general stages across domains.The closest thing to development is the description of a sequenceof skills within a domain(Gagne1970); but such a sequence is considereda relatively arbitrary consequence of the particular environmental circumstances experiencedby the child, including the nature of the task and the pattern of environmental contingencies. A sequence of steps in learning to count, for example, is a result of such environmentalfactors as the specific
problems encountered and the teaching methodsused. Consequently, developmental sequencesare specific to domainsand experiences, potentially infinite in their diversity. Behaviors can becomemore complexover time, and certain behaviors are prerequisites to others. Childrenmust learn to count before they can add, and they must be able to add before they can do algebra. Theseorderings are called habit-family hierarchies or production-systemhierarchies and are held to be entirely specific to particular domains(Keil 1981). According to the mechanistic view, different children seem to develop certain skills at the sameage primarily because (a) complexbehaviors take longer to learn than simple ones do and (b) the social environment teaches skills at certain ages (Higgins &Eccles 1983). Similarly, developmentalsynchrony across domainscan be explained in nonstructural terms (Flavell 1982). Just Piaget could analyze learning as analogous to the mastery of circus tricks, Skinner (1969) or Klahr & Wallace(1976) can treat development as an illusion based on cumulative learning. Mechanisticmethodologiespresumethe importanceof observing learning or problemsolving in various contexts and among people with various histories. The resulting research designs and methodscan readily detect environmental effects and individual differences in performance but cannot uncoverstage-like uniformities. For example, tasks or testing conditions are manipulated to demonstrate the variability of behavior in different contexts, or problemsolving strategies are assessed to demonstrate the variability of behavioracross individuals. However, no analyses are done to detect consistencies in behavior across tasks for a particular age group or consistent differences betweenage groups. In order to acknowledge the relevance of cognitive structures to intelligence, a few investigators have developed a mechanistic-functional version of the competence/performance approach (Chomsky 1965, Gelman & Baillargeon 1983). They posit that at birth (or someother early point in development) infants havethe competence for all human cognition--i.e, they possess a set of universal logical structures. Behavioralchangeoccurs not in this competence but in performance,whichis affected by diverse environmentaland organismic factors. This approach denies a progression of general stages but accepts logical structures present early in life. Aswith the organismic-structural models of competenceand performance, the structures are isolated from behavior and from immediate environmental and organismic influences (Bullock 1981). The mechanistic-functional approach is strong exactly where the organismic-structural one is wcak. Cognitive differences across cultures and individuals can be compared in terms of their context-specific functions; their maturity in other terms need not be ranked (Snarey et al 1983, Silvern 1984).
Developmentaldifferences can be attributed to the observed influence of environmentalvariations (Fischer 1980, Biggs &Collis 1982). The plentiful evidence of individual differences and unevennessin development [what Piaget (1971) called d~calage]can be taken seriously. Onthe other hand, the mechanistic perspective provides no basis for identifying developmentaluniversals or constraints uponthe nature of environmental impact at a particular age (R. J. Lerner &M. B. Kauffman,unpublished manuscript; Silvern 1984). The fundamentalcommitment to diversity discourages consideration of the suggestion that context is effective only whenan organism can understand and respond. The search for consistency and universals is effectively ruled out by the prescribed level of analysis and the methods of observation. Overcoming the Conceptual Dichotomy
The attempt to integrate hypotheses involving stages with those involving individual differences is an effort to incorporatethe advantages of both organismic and mechanisticapproaches. Findinga point of integration requires obviating the profound separation between organism and environment presumedby the two approaches. Both frameworks have isolated the organismtheoretically from the environment (Chandler 1977). The organismic-structural framework has located the impetusfor knowledge in structures inside the person, separable from context and function. The mechanistic-functional frameworkhas located the impetus for knowledge in environments that affect the individual (Fischer Bullock 1984). Competence/performance models have attempted to reconcile the opposing frameworksby giving each one responsibility for a different aspect of behavior. Competence reflects the structure of the organisms mind; performancederives from the variability in function arising from environmental and organismic influences. In contrast, manyscholars have recently attempted to describe development as residing in a relation betweenorganismand environment--in a transaction (Gollin 1981, 1984b, Sameroffet al 1982), collaboration (Fischer &Bullock 1984), fit (Chess &Thomas1983, Leruer 1984, Silvern 1984), interaction (Cole & Traupman1981), or convergence (Bullock 1983). These contemporary efforts to introduce a level of analysis that conjoins organismicstructure and environmentalvariation differ from traditional studies of the interaction betweentwo discrete factors. In the conjoint analyses, the factors are not independent; instead, the relevance of each for development involves that of the other (Fischer 1980, Silvern 1984). Characteristics of the individual, such as structures, are said to have meaningonly in particular contexts, while variable contexts have meaningfor developmentonly in light of the indi-viduals developmentalstatus.
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Instead of identifying a closed developmentalsequence of structures, the investigator seeks to specify howstructures showstabilities and changes in different contexts for people of different ages. Instead of identifying the regularity of environmental impacts, the investigator seeks to specify how environments have similar and differing effects as a function of human structures and motivations. No cognitive assessment can ever be free of context or free of the effect of age-related changesin cognitive organization. Thusthe " findings of both the organismic and the mechanistic viewpoints remain relevant, and the prescription for newresearch is to combine the methods of the two viewpoints. Cole & Traupman (1981) provided a memorable illustration of the benefits of viewing cognition as a person-environmentcollaboration. They presented the cases of two boys, one of whom had a serious learning disability. In standard intelligence testing, the disabled boy showed his disability, and the other boytested as normal;but for the activity of bakingbreadin a class setting, the outcome was reversed, even thoughthis activity required reading and other skills assessedin the intelligence test. In this setting, the disabledboyactively worked to get aroundhis deficits, using the skills he had; the relative lack of constraint in the class facilitated his construction of the situation to fit his abilities. The normal boy responded to the lack of constraint by becoming distractable and disorganized---characteristics not evident in the moreconstraiv.ed situation of intelligence testing. Intellectual adequacy wasa function of the fit betweenperson and context. Efforts to build a conjoint framework require conceptsfor characterizing the collaboration of person and environment.Vygotskys (1978) workhas proved fertile source of such concepts. Adequatecognitive progression requires a process of scaffolding, in which adults provide children with the specific environmentalsupport they need for acccomplishinga task that wouldotherwise be beyond them (Wood1980, Bruner 1982, Kaye 1982). The children provide whatever components they can for the task and with the adults guidancegradually reinvent the solution that the adults already know (Fischer & Bullock 1984). Adequate scaffolding requires that the adults carefully monitor each childs current structure, interest, and goal (Westerman &Fischman-Havstad 1982). In interactions betweenadults, similar scaffolding processes occur, with each adult supportingcertain kinds of behaviorsin the other. This frameworkis not only a description of how the social environment contributes to the personscognitive structure. It also has implications for how this structure in context is evaluated. A persons cognitive status cannot be identified independently of the degree of scaffolding or other environmental support he or she is experiencingduring the assessment.A person has no single ability but a "zone of proximaldevelopment" that is accesseddifferently under
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different support conditions (Vygotsky 1978). At the same time, the influence of context on cognition cannot be assessed independently from the responsiveness of the particular person to that context. Person and environmentalways collaborate to produce any behavior. With concepts like environmental support and zone of proximal development, the issues of stages and individual differences can be integrated. Indeed, under certain conditions of observation and degrees of abstraction, universal stages of cognitive organization can be observed; under others, important individual differences in developmentalsequences occur. EVIDENCE FOR STAGES
The concept of stage has long been a center of controversy in developmental psychology(Wohlwill1973). Part of the basis for the controversy lies in the fundamentaldifferences betweenthe priori assumptionsof the organismic and mechanistic approaches. In addition, organismic-structural investigators have frequently been vagueabout the empirical criteria that define a stage. Whatpatterns of developmentaldata can be used to index a stage? A number of criteria have been proposed or implied by stage theorists, and data are available to test themall. When the strongest empirical criteria for stage are used, the evidencefor stages is notably weak. But with a less stringent set of criteria, there is good evidence that development showsstages under some conditions. Empirical Criteria
Piaget (1957, 1975), Kohlberg and colleagues (1983), and others have posed a long list of characteristics that stages musthave to be consistent with the structural framework. For example,each stage must be a structured whole, and all later stages must subsume the structures of earlier ones. As~partof our effort to move beyond the definitional restrictions of the organismic-structural framework, however, we focus on empirical criteria---the patterns of data required or implied by structural hypotheses. Fischer & Bullock (1981) argue that all proposed characteristics of stages involve three general patterns of data: developmentalsequences, synchronies in developmental steps across sequences, and constraints on the possible sequences and synchronies that are predicted to occur. Developmentalsequences have been the only one of these three patterns of data to be routinely observed and replicated (Wohlwil11973, Flavell 1982); and sequences alone not evidence stages, because a sequencemay, for example,characterize only a particular domainand showno synchronies or other relations across domains. Unless synchronies or constraints also obtain, developmental stages cannot be demonstrated.
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AND SYNCHRONY Piagets (1957) structured-wholehypothesis specifies at least two patterns of sequence, synchrony, and constraint (Broughton 1981, Fischer &Bullock 1981, Flavell 1982). First, knowledgeshould develop through one universal developmental sequencein diverse domains, the samesequencefor all people in all cultures (Kohlberget al 1983). Second, each child should demonstrate high synchrony in the sequence across domains, at least at each age whena new structured wholeemerges. The most important structured wholesare (a) sensorimotor and representational groups, which are achieved at the end of the sensorimotor period; (b) concrete operations; and (c) formal operations (Piaget 1970). Preoperationalthoughtdoes not manifest a structured whole(Piaget et al 1968). For example,according to the synchronycriterion, whenindividual children develop concrete operations in one type of conservation (e.g. amount of water) they should simultaneously develop concrete operations in others (e.g. length of a string). Strictly speaking, the structured-whole should even induce concrete-operational structures simultaneously in tasks involving schemesother than conservation, such as classification, seriation, and number(Inhelder Piaget 1964[1959]). According to the most literal interpretation of the structured-whole hypothesis, children should develop concrete operations in all domainsat virtually the same point in time, thereby showingwhat is called point synchrony (Fischer &Bullock 1981). However,point synchrony across domainshas never been found. To the contrary, children manifest high unevenness or drcalage (Feldman1980, Biggs & Collis 1982, Flavell 1982). Piaget acknowledged this unevenness but never explainedit; late in his life he asserted that it couldnot be explained(Piaget 1971).Withinthe structuralist tradition, is difficult if not impossible to explain such variation (Broughton 1981). In the sameway, research has not confirmedany strong form of the universal-sequence hypothesis. Although the data suggest that virtually all children show the sensorimotor and preoperational stages (Dasen et al 1978), many adolescents and adults in non-Westerncultures do not demonstratePiagetian formal operations or even concrete operations (Dasen 1977, Cole et al 1984). However, this apparentfailure of the hypothesismay be due to the fact that tests for universality have used Piagets tasks, which were devised for Western European children. A few studies have used tasks devised for a specific non-Western culture, such as navigation tasks for a culture where people regularly navigate boats betweendistant islands (Gladwin1970). With such culturally appropriate, familiar tasks, all people do seemto showconcrete and formal operations (Greenfield 1976, Super 1980, Cole et al 1984). Thesecross-cultural findings illustrate a general pattern that holds for synchrony, universality, and virtually every other criterion for stage: When environmentalfactors are disregarded, the data do not support stage theory; when environmentalfactors are taken into account, the evidence for stages becomes
much stronger. Onlyunder certain environmentalconditions do people develop in a stage-like manner. This pattern supports a perspective that conjoins organism and environment. Although synchronous onset and universal sequence have been the stated criteria for stages, most research conductedby Piaget and others within the organismic-structural tradition has been designed to test a weakercriterion: Ontasks designed to assess a given stage, success should be age-dependent. By this criterion, the concept of stage has received overwhelming support. In scores of studies using the tasks originally designed to assess conservation, most children in industrialized countries have demonstratedconcrete operations between 6 and 10 years of age, and the same is true for concrete operational tasks in other domains(Inhelder & Piaget 1964 [1959], Wohlwill 1973, Halford 1982, Case 1984). For all of Piagets four mainstages, most children in industrialized cultures have succeededat his tasks at about the ages he described (Dasen1977, McCall et al 1977, Dasenet al 1978). Withthe original tasks and testing conditions, Piagets findings are highly replicable. Indeed, on a host of tasks devised by other investigators (e.g. Watson1981, Case 1984), age is the most potent, easily measurable predictor of stage of performance. The form of cognitive growth seemsto be highly similar on the average for children from industrialized cultures. Of course, whentasks or testing conditions are changed,or when children are tested on tasks never encounteredin their culture, the age predictions do not hold (Feldman 1980, Fischer 1980, Biggs & Collis 1982, Flavell 1982). Fewstudies have used tasks appropriate to nonindustrial cultures. A common criticism from mechanistic-functional investigators is that these findings can be explained awayby environmental factors that are correlated with age (Higgins & Eccles 1983). However,while environmental factors correlate with age, it is not clear that they producethe cognitive changesin children. Adults gear a childs social environment to the level of the childs developing capacities (Vygotsky 1978, Cairns et al 1980, Kaye1982), The criticism thus provides no alternative explanation. Teasing apart contributions intrinsic to the child from those of the social environmentwill require the construction of specific modelsof the collaboration between child and environment. Although the relation between average performance and age is a highly replicable result, it remains an unsatisfactory criterion for stage. First, the relation is imprecise, with the data showingsubstantial divergences from the averageage for certain tasks, testing conditions, and children. Second,the age results alone provide no criteria for demarcatingtransitions betweenstages or
RELATION OF PERFORMANCE WITH AGE
Annual Reviews www.annualreviews.org/aronline STAGESANDINDIVIDUALDIFFERENCES 629 specifying howdevelopmental progressions are stage-like. Uponwhat basis can we assert that a certain accomplishmentmarks a new stage? QUALITATIVE CHANGE Some investigators have focused on qualitative change as a morespecific criterion for stage transition. In general, qualitative changes involve the organization rather than the amountof a behavior or capacity. For example, consider a 5-year-old boy whocan understand variations in the height of the water in two containers (correctly specifying which container has higher water) but cannot deal with variations in the total quantity of water (conservation). A year or two later, whenthat boycomesto understand the relation of height and width and so constructs an understanding of conservation, he will have demonstrateda qualitative changein his knowledge.Consequently, he will be said to have entered a newstage. The qualitative-change criterion has been used explicitly in a numberof neo-structural theories (McCall et al 1977, Bickhard 1978, Biggs & Collis 1982, Halford 1982, Commons et al 1984) and implicitly by many other researchers in the Piagetian tradition. Research on cognitive development demonstrates a large numberof qualitative changes associated with Piagetian stages, but which of these changes signals transition to a newstage? When a girl learns to button her shirt or a woman learns to walk on showshoes,her behavior has undergonea qualitative change. Withqualitative change as the criterion, every increment of learning wouldmark a new stage (Fischer et al 1984). In practice, most researchers have sidestepped this problem by using an intuitive sense of what counts as an important qualitative change. For general theories of cognitive development,such as those of Biggs & Collis (1982), Case(1984), Halford(1982), and of course Piaget (1970), structural definitions such as that for conservationhave been provided to specify important changes. Withina given theory, such definitions indicate whichqualitative changes marktransitions to newstages or levels, but problemsarise whentheories are compared. Biggs &Collis (1982), for example,define one level on the basis an adolescents ability to construct a number of independent,abstract concepts about a topic (e.g. to suggestseveral reasons why it is rainy on the coastal side of a mountain range). Fischer (1980) and Case (1984) describe a level at the sameage but define it as involving the construction of a relation between two abstract concepts. Inhelder &Piaget (1958 [1955]) specify no major stage at the same point but only a substage elaborating formal operations. Which of the several posited qualitative changes provides the better evidencefor a stage? A criterion is needed that allows determination of whichqualitative changes merit designation as a stage. In summary, the criterion of age can be measured precisely and reliably, but it lacks specificity in that by itself (withouta theoretical framework) it provides
no definition of what age-related changesare sufficient to define stage transitions. The criterion of qualitative changeprovideswaysof defining a stage, but as it has beenused, it has not beenpossible to bring data to bear uponalternative claims about the qualitative changes that count as stages. DISCONTINUITY Oneof the traditional criteria for stage transitions, discontinuity, has been generally neglected in cognitive developmentalresearch (Werner 1948, Globerson 1985): Whena new stage emerges, the change behavior in a given domainshould be large and rapid. Of course, the term "discontinuity" has many other meanings as well, including qualitative change; but large, rapid change seems to be the most straightforward. Withany continuous or approximatelycontinuous developmentalscale, it is possible to detect discontinuities by using proceduresthat independentlyassess each important step, such as scalogram techniques and longitudinal assessments (Uzgiris & Hunt 1975, Seibert et al 1984). A discontinuity occurs wheneverdevelopment along this scale changes abruptly (spurts or drops). The question of whethera specific qualitative changeis important enoughto count as a newstage is not an issue; the magnitude of the discontinuity with respect to the rest of the developmental curve speaks for itself. Several methodsare available for finding and analyzing this kind of discontinuity (Fischer et al 1984). In general, most of themprovide waysof detecting either (a) that large numbers of subjects cluster at certain points on a developmental scale or (b) that individual subjects spend long periods at certain points on a scale before they develop to higher points. The discontinuity criterion has not often been used in developmentalresearch. However, several investigators whohave used it in studies of developmentin the first two years of life havefounda cluster of spurts and other rapid developmentalchanges at specific ages (Emdeet al 1976, Kagan1982, Corrigan 1983, Zelazo & Leonard 1983, Seibert et al 1984). In one of the most elegant studies, McCalland his colleagues (1977) found a series of four rapid dropsin the stability of the first unrotated factor on infant intelligence tests, along with major changes in the kinds of items that loaded on that factor. A number of recent studies of stages in infancy have foundfour similar stages or levels (Fischer 1982). For childhood and adolescence, the few investigators who have used the discontinuity criterion have also obtained promising findings (Jaques et al 1978, Tabor & Kendler 1981, Kenny1983). Only one such set of results is widely known,however,and its significance has been misinterpreted. Epstein (1974, 1980) found evidence of several growth spurts in head circumference and brain-wavepatterns in childhood and adolescence. The ages of the spurts correlated generally with the ages of emergenceof Piagetian stages as described in Piagets original research. However,the few behavioral data in
Epsteins reports left these correlations unconvincing.Despite the limitations of these data, major conclusions were drawnabout learning capacities, including claims that children can learn newskills only at the ages whenthey show brain-growthspurts (Epstein 1978). Recentdirect tests of this learning hypothesis have not supported it (McCall et al 1983; A. C. Petersen &S. M. Kavrell, unpublisheddata). In addition, it seemsthat some of the data analyses of the physical-growth variables were done carelessly (McQueen 1982). Fromthese several studies, the discontinuity criterion seemsparticularly promising as a straightforward index of stage. Wesuspect, however, that unless investigators adopt a collaborational perspective, they will encounter serious problems in using this criterion, just as they havewith others. Discontinuities will comeand go as a function of not only the child but also the environment, they will be evident in some tasks and under some testing conditions (Fischer &Bullock 1984). UPPER LIMIT Anothertraditional criterion for stage that has been neglected to some degree is stage-specific learning capacity. If a stage is characterizedby an upperlimit on cognitive capacity, then whatcan be learned at that stage should be predictable from that capacity: Childrenat that stage should (a) be able learn tasks requiring the characteristic capacity, and (b) be unableto learn tasks that require the capacity of later stages, even whenadults provide learning proceduresthat are successful for children at those next stages. Several studies have demonstratedboth stage-specific learning capacity and stage-specific failure to learn (Jaques et al 1978, OBrien & Overton 1982, Case 1984, Fischer et al 1984). Manymechanistic-functional studies have demonstrated that changes in tasks or testing conditions can alter the childs performance on someclass of tasks (Gelman1978, Flavell 1982). These results have often been taken meanthat children do not show stage-specific learning capacity or stagespecific failure to learn. For example, on Piagets tasks children cannot usually demonstrate conservation of numberuntil the kindergarten or elementaryschool years, but with simplified tasks they can showsomethinglike conservation as early as 2 or 3 years of age. Although such results do create problems for the organismic-structural conception of stage, they do not preclude a less extremeconception. Indeed, they are expected within a collaborationist perspective, because its adherents hold that environmentalconditions such as task complexitycontribute to stage of performance.Learning capacities will come and go as a function of both the condition of the child and the conditionof the environment.If stages exist, the comingand going will not be disorderly. It will follow specific collaborational principles that can be used to predict when children will and will not demonstrate task-specific learning capacity and task-specific failure to learn.
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THE CRITERIA IN A COLLABORATIONAL FRAMEWORK For each criterion for stage, the portrait painted by research is similar. Undersome circumstances, the data support the existence of stages, but under other circumstancesthey do not. The only exception to this generalization seems to be the structured-wholehypothesis, which the data do not support for any testing circumstances. Yet even the structured-whole hypothesis can be decomposed into its principal empirical criteria, universality and synchrony,which, when considered separately from the hypothesis, share the fate of the others. As already mentioned, people develop through something like Piagets sequence of four universal stages so long as the assessments of their developmentuse culturally appropriate, familiar tasks (Greenfield 1976, Dasen1977, Super 1980, Cole et al 1984). The sequence of stages is therefore neither a characteristic of the entire human mind unaffected by context, as structuralists would have it, nor the product of context-boundperformance on particular tasks, as functionalists would have it. Instead, the sequence reflects the development of certain intellectual functions under a limited class of environmentalconditions. The specific tasks masteredare not universal. Individual and cultural differences occur routinely in the specifics of sequences.Predicting whichtasks will reflect the universal stages for given cultures or individuals requires intimate knowledge of both the contexts familiar to those people and the goals they are pursuing (Cole et al 1984). The sequence holds only when performance and assessment conditions are described in highly abstract terms, not whenparticular behaviors, tasks, or proceduresare specified. Similarly for synchrony, environmentalconditions must be introduced into the analysis. Manystudies have found some degree of synchrony across a numberof tasks designed to measurethe same stage (Feldman1980, McCallet al 1983, Case 1984, Seibert et a11984);many others havefound little or no such synchrony (Rubin 1973, Biggs & Collis 1982, Flavell 1982, Rest 1983, Sternberg &Powell1983). The studies finding evidence for synchronytypically have employed modestcriteria--general statistical relations requiring only moderate degrees of synchrony in large samples of children performing many different tasks. Usinga research design in whichfamiliarity, practice, priming, and so forth combined to provide environmental support for high-level functioning, a few studies have demonstrated high synchrony with fewer tasks and smaller samples (Corrigan 1983, Kenny1983). These results suggest a collaborational hypothesis: High synchronywill occur whenthe environment, providing strong support for high-level functioning, enables the subject to operate at his or her highest level in the several assessed domains(Fischer et al 1984). Because the data do not support the traditional conceptof stage while they do provide evidence for someweaker form of stage-like change, manydevelop-
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mental scholars now avoid "stage" in favor of some more modest term. One of the most commonreplacement terms is "level," which we shall use for the rest of this chapter to refer to neo-Piagetian concepts of stage.
Consensus on Levels Thecollaborational approach mayeventually producea workableframework for predicting whenbehavior showsstage-like change. In the meantime, however, guidelinesare neededaboutwhere to look for developmental levels. Happily,a consensus is developing about the mainlevels (or transitions or
reorganizations) that occur in infancy and childhood. In general, neostructural theorists searching for developmental changes in the organization of behavior
haveinferredsimilar levels at similar ages. Of course,anyparticular theorist doesnot necessarily posit all the levels suggested byothertheorists. In this chapter,weconsider a level to exist when (a) neostructural theories
show substantial consensus about it and (b) evidence supports at least four
the six empiricalcriteria discussedabove.Bythese criteria, at least eight developmental levels markthe period between birth andearly adulthood (see
Table 1). Table 1 Eight developmental levels supported by research and by theoretical consensus Modal age of a emergence 2-4 months 7-8 months 11-13 months 18-24 months 4-5 years
Level Sensorimotor actions Sensorimotorrelations of a few actions Sensorimotor systems of several actions Representations Relations of a few representations Concrete operations
Documented characteristics Single actions and perceptions, first social responsiveness Differentiation and coordination of meansand end, attachment relation to caretaker Location of characteristics in objects and peopie, single words Symbolization of people and objects, vocabulary spurt, multiwordutterances Coordinationof categories in a simple relation, solution of simplified concrete operations tasks Coordination of several complexcategories, solution of Piagetian concrete operations tasks Abstractions, hypothetical ideas, solution of easiest Piagetian formal operations tasks, conceptsof personality traits Coordinationof abstractions, solution of most Piagetian formal operations tasks, concepts of personality dynamics
6--8 years
Beginning formal operations Relations of abstract generalizations
10-12 years
14-16 years
aThese agesindicate the periodwhen a level first appearsaccording to researchon middle-class Western children.
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In every case, the evidence for these levels exterids beyond traditional cognitive tasks. Alongwith the cognitive changescomechanges in personality and social behavior (Sroufe 1979, Selman1980, Harter 1983, Seibert et al 1984, Fischer & Elmendorf1985), changes in perceptual abilities (Vurpillot 1976[1972], Fischer 1982, Strauss & Curtis 1984), and changesin biological or physical variables such as brain wavesor sleep cycles (White1970, Epstein 1974, 1980, Emdeet al 1976, Kagan 1982, Fischer & Bullock 1984). The extent of consensus about infancy is remarkable. Repeatedly, investigators have hypothesized four major levels or reorganizations of sensorimotor intelligence duringthe first twoyears of life, in contrast to the six stages that Piaget (1952 [ 1936]) described. The emergence of each of these levels appears to be closely associated with age, at least for middle-class children in Western cultures. It is beyond the scopeof this chapter to cite the many relevant articles, but several general reviews have been published (Uzgiris 1976, Sroufe 1979, Fischer 1982, Harris 1983, Case 1984). Below we cite only additional articles especially central to each developmentallevel. The first sensorimotor level, which emergesbetween2 and 4 monthsof age, involves the capacity for intelligent adaptation of a single action, such as looking at a face or graspinga rattle. Following Piaget (1952[ 1936]), this level is often hypothesized to markthe beginningof intelligent, voluntary adaptation of actions. The second sensorimotor level, which begins at 7 to 8 months of age, produces the capacity to construct a simple relation of actions. For example, infants can differentiate a meansfrom an end, as whenthey use what they see to guide howthey crawl across a platform (Campos et al 1978). At the third sensorimotor level, appearing between 11 and 13 months, infants can construct a complexrelation of actions that includes multiple sensorimotor components in a single cognitive system (Zelazo & Leonard 1983). One hallmarkof such a systemis that children can understandthat an object, event, or person has someconstant property, such as that a rattle makes a certain type of sound no matter what action is used to shake it. Anespecially significant changeappears to occur in the secondyear with the emergence of the fourth level, representation--the symbolization of objects, events, or people independently of any particular action of the child. [Notethat the term "representation" here follows Piagets (1952 [1936]) usage, which differs from that common in mechanistic-functional information-processing models(Kiahr &Wallace 1976).] Speech surges forward, with a burst of new vocabulary and the beginning of multiword utterances; and pretend play changes dramatically, increasing in frequency and showingthe onset of symbolization of people and objects as acting on their own(Corrigan 1983). Virtually all neostructural theories agree that the emergence of a newcognitive unit, representation, marksan especially large change(Piaget 1952 [1936]). The representations that emerge at this fourth level lay the basis for the
understanding of increasingly complexrelations among representations at the next several levels. For childhoodand adolescence, the consensus among neostructural theorists is also remarkable, though here a few more disagreements are evident than among infancy researchers. In general, at least four majorlevels or reorganizations are posited beyond the levels of infancy (Jaques et al 1978, Fischer 1980, Biggs & Collis 1982, Halford 1982, Case 1984, Commons et al 1984). Virtually every neostructural theorist has hypothesizeda level developingat approximately4 years of age, even thoughPiaget (Piaget et al 1968) did not postulate a structured wholeat this point (theories cited aboveplus PascualLeone1970, Wallon1970, Bickhard 1978, Siegler 1981). Children develop the capacity to build a simple relation of representations, coordinatingtwoor more ideas in a single skill. For example, they can do simple perspective-takingtasks in whichthey relate their ownperspective to that of someone else in order to understand howthe two differ; they can also perform simplified versions of many of Piagets concrete operations tasks, such as conservationand transitivity (Gelman1978). Thesixth level, concrete operations, emerges at 6 or 7 years. Thereis strong research evidenceto indicate a majorchangein capacity at this age that fits all six empirical criteria (Inhelder & Piaget 1964 [1959], White 1970, Siegler 1981, Tabor &Kendler 1981, Watson1981). Children become able to combine multiple representations to form a complex construct, so that they can understand manyof the complexities of characteristics of concrete objects and events. In conservation, for example,they can relate the height and width of water in one container to the height and width of water in another container. Despite the consensus about this level among most neostructural theorists, a few hypothesizethat concrete operations is not a separate level but a continuation and elaboration of the level of relations of representations (Pascual-Leone 1970, Case 1984). The seventh level, formal operations (Inhelder &Piaget 1958[ 1955]), marks another especially significant transformation: At 10 to 12 years, children developthe capacity to generalize across concrete instances so as to construct abstract generalizations or hypothetical ideas, such as conformity, justice, possibility, and personality (Gruber &Von6che1976, Selman1980, Harter 1983). Neostructuralists agree that this level is not the endpointof cognitive development but the beginning of a new type of understanding, involving abstract ideas. This new capability underlies further developmentallevels, much as the fourth level, representation, lays the basis for the fifth and sixth levels. The number of levels beyondformal operations is not yet clear, but theory and research suggest at least one additional level emerging at approximately 14 to 16 years. Adolescents become able to relate abstractions or hypothetical
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ideas, so that they can deal with relational concepts such as liberal and conservative, generate new hypothesesinstead of merelytesting old ones, and solve the majority of Piagets formal operations tasks (Martarano1977, Commonset al 1984). Cognitive growth clearly continues beyond16 years of age, as individuals become able to deal with complexrelations among abstractions (K. Kitchener 1982), but we do not yet knowwhether these changes meet the criteria of further developmental levels. Besides the additional levels hypothesizedfor adolescence and early adulthood, several theorists have hypothesizedadditional levels at two other points in development.Fischer (1980) has suggested that three levels occur in rapid successionin the first four months of life, before the first sensorimotor level of single actions. Case (1984) and Biggs &Collis (1982) have postulated three additional levels in the early preschoolyears, between the levels of representations and simple relations of representations. In summary, under someconditions behavioral development fits all the main empirical criteria for stage. Neostructural theories agree that humans move through at least eight levels between birth and 18 years of age. The six empirical criteria and the eight levels provide guidelines for howand whereto look for levels in doing research within a collaborationist framework.Another central need is for guidelines about howand whereto investigate variations in stage or level arising from environmentaland organismic factors. EVIDENCE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS AFFECTING LEVELS AND ORGANISMIC
Oneof the best documented facts in developmental research is that people show wide variations in level as a function of both environmental and organismic factors (Feldman 1980, Fischer 1980, Biggs &Collis 1982, Flavell 1982). Unevenness in level, or drcalage, is clearly the normin development.Much of the research documenting unevenness has derived from the mechanisticfunctional tradition and has been designed to demonstratethat stages do not exist. Developmentalunevenness, however, does not demonstrate that levels do not exist. Instead, it demonstrates that level varies as a function of many factors besides a stable competencein the organismic-structural sense. A fruitful approach is to seek order in the variation: whatfactors affect level, and how can they be characterized? Environment All the factors traditionally studied within the mechanistic-functionalorientation influence developmental level: practice, stimulus, testing procedure, task, and so forth (Gelman1978, Odom 1978, Fischer & Bullock 1981, Stemberg
STAGESANDINDIVIDUALDIFFERENCES 637 Powell 1983). For example, Jackson and colleagues (1978) used traditional object-permanence tasks to assess the ability of 8-to 12-month-old infants to find a hiddenobject. Theresearchers varied practice, type of task, and nature of the object being hidden. All three factors producedsignificant changes along the developmental scale; for practice and task, the variation amounted to one full sensorimotorlevel (from the secondto the third level in Table 1). Task difficulty affects performance in a straightforward way. Simplification of tasks on which age norms were initially established allows success at younger ages (Gelman1978, Flavell 1982). Althoughclaims have sometimes been madethat such findings disprove stage theories, they fit easily within a neostructural framework. It can be argued, for example,that variations in the difficulty of a task changethe complexity of the skills it requires and therefore changethe developmentallevel it indexes. A simple task for conservation of numbercan be performed earlier than a more complex one because the two tasks assess different steps in a developmentalsequence for conservation of number. Developmental levels arise from the collaboration of the child with the task. Differencesin task content also affect cognitive level. Evenwhentasks have been designed to assess the samestructural accomplishment (e.g. perspectivetaking), tasks with different content frequently produce different levels of performance(Ford 1979, Rubin 1973, Higgins & Eccles 1983). For example, task that assesses howwell a subject understands the perspective of someone looking at one side of a complexdisplay is likely to produce a different developmental pattern from one that assesses understandingthe perspective of someone in the midst of a social interaction. What seemto be minordifferences in content can even influence the order of steps in a developmental sequence.In one study, a task involving circular motion revealed one developmentalsequence, while for a task involving linear motion the sequence was reversed (Levin 1985). There is order in the variations arising from different types of tasks. The individuals particular abilities collaborate with the content and complexity of the task to produce performance. Withinthe psychometrictesting tradition, many modelsof intelligence represent this collaboration in terms of classes of tasks that produce similar patterns of individual differences (Horn 1976, Sternberg &Powell 1983). In fact, somescholars have argued that different classes of tasks maytap entirely different types of intelligence, whichshow distinct and independent developmental patterns (Turiel 1977, Keil 1981, Gardner 1983). Seeminglyminor variations in procedure can also substantially affect determination of level. Many of these variations concern the degree of environmental support for high-level performance(Vygotsky1978, Gollin &Garrison 1980, Fischer & Pipp 1984). For example, in several studies assessing chil-
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drens understanding of social interaction in pretendplay, twoslightly different procedures produced vastly different levels of performance(Watson&Fischer 1980, Hand 1981). The proceduresdiffered in degree of support but not in task or content. Underthe high-support procedure, children heard a samplestory for each step assessed in the developmental sequence. Under the low-support procedure, they were asked to makeup stories of their ownsimilar to the ones they had acted out under the high-support procedure. Elementary-school children were typically able to act out a concreteoperational story in the high-support condition. That is, they could maketwo dolls simultaneously occupytwo intersecting social categories, such as nice and mean. In the low-support procedure, they acted out muchless advanced stories. Nine-year-oldstypically droppedfrom the level of concrete operations to the level of simple relations of representations--their performance comparable to that of 4- or 5-year-olds under the high-support procedure. The potent effect of environmentalsupport on developmentallevel does not meanthat there are no maturational constraints on childrens performance.To the contrary, these studies foundconsistent age differences for each of the two support conditions and for the degree of discrepancy between the two conditions. In another series of studies, Gollin and his colleagues (Gollin &Garrison 1980, and unpublished manuscripts) have found predictable age differences in the effects of environmental supports on preschoolchildren, with specific types of support having an effect only at a specific age. The characteristics of the child collaborate with those of the environmentto produce level of performance. Mostof the studies illustrating the effects of task difficulty, content, and environmental support used a developmental scale to represent the variations in level. When studies are designedto include assessmentof the variations along a developmentalscale, different conditions often moveperformanceforward or backwardon the scale (Wolff 1966, Feldman1980, Prechtl &OBrien 1982). Such scales are important tools for research within a collaborational framework, because they provide a common means of ordering the effects of both organismic and environmental variations. Organism Although environmental influences have received muchof the attention in discussions of developmentalunevenness, organismic influences appear to be equally important. Factors that characterize individuals havepotent effects on developmentallevel, movingperformance up or down a developmentalscale in the sameway that environmentalfactors do. Some such individual characteristics, such as arousal state, vary over short periods, while others, such as internalization, ability, and attribution bias, are relatively stable. In general, organismic and environmental factors interact to produce be-
havior. Virtually any factor that is classified as organismicfromone perspective can be classified as environmentalfrom another, and vice versa. Arousal state, for example, is typically classified as an organismic factor, but arousal is not understandableaside from an arousing context, and the arousing aspects of a context cannot be identified independently of knowledgeabout the individual. When children encountera situation that affects thememotionally, their arousal level changes. The arousal level is actually a characteristic of the child-in-a-context.In turn, arousal has an effect on the childs cognitivelevel in that context, and the cognitive adequacy of his or her understandinginfluences the experienced nature of the context. In a developmental version of the Yerkes-Dodson law, degree of arousal appears to have a curvilinear relation to developmental level. Children manifest their highest level at an intermediate degree of arousal and lowerlevels as arousal increases or decreases from that point (Fischer & Elmendorf 1985). This phenomenonhas been thoroughly documentedfor young infants (Wolff 1966, Prechtl & OBrien 1982), but further investigation is required for children of other ages. Individualcharacteristics that are relatively stable also functionin collaboration with the environment. In internalization, for example, people subsume information from the environment into their ownskills. Mechanistic-functional analyses of internalization often emphasizethe environmentalinformation and forget that internalization is a characteristic of a person. People provide environmental support or scaffolding for themselves.Individuals differ both in the degree to whichthey haveinternalized a particular task and the degree to which they are skilled at internalization in general (Vygotsky1978). With greater internalization, people showa smaller gap in level of performance betweenhigh- and low-support situations (Belsky et al 1984, Fischer &Pipp 1984). Skill at internalization is an instance of a moregeneral class of organismic factors that affect development--ability. IQ as measured by standardized tests wasoriginally intendedto index the rate of an individuals intellectual developmentin relation to age-group norms. Much of the variation in ability, then, involves variation along a developmental scale. The extensive research on intelligence tests indicates that individuals vary enormously in both their general facility for test problemsand their specific facilities for particular problemtypes, such as spatial puzzles or verbal analogies (Horn 1976, Sternberg & Powell 1983). Once again, characteristics of the individual work together with characteristics of the environmentto produce performance. A wide range of personality factors influence cognitive level--e.g, motives, anxiety, defenses, emotions, and interpersonal attributions. These factors appear to influence level in contexts such as moral reasoning (Rest 1983), interpersonal understanding (Selman1980, Fischer & Pipp 1984), and general intellectual functioning (Block 1982). As an exampleof the importance of
personality variable, children are differently affected by negative evaluations of their intellectual performance. Childrenin one category called "helpless" by analogy to learned helplessness, do worse after negative evaluations; their effort, expectation of success, and maturity of problem solving all decline (Dweck & Goetz 1978, Boggiano & Ruble 1984). Other children do not manifest this pattern. This difference betweenchildren seemsto arise from the helpless childrens attributions of the failure to their ownsupposedly poor ability. Thusevaluation, an environmental variable, influences cognitive level morefor somechildren than for others, while helplessness, a personal characteristic, is influential in some situations (those of negativeevaluation)but not others. The fit betweenchild and situation is crucial. Moreover,the nature of this fit can extend beyond immediate effects to produce long-term domainspecific individual differences in cognitive achievement (Dweck& Goetz 1978). Organismic variables, however,do morethan raise or lower cognitive level. Both theory and data force consideration of the possibility that organismic factors, especially emotionand motivation, havepotent, differential effects on developmental patterns. By affecting howindividuals characteristically think, these factors organize the sequencesthrough which those individuals develop. INDIVIDUAL SEQUENCES DIFFERENCES IN AND OUTCOMES DEVELOPMENTAL
A direct implication of the evidencefor variations in developmental level is that different individuals should show different developmental patterns. If a host of environmental factors produce cognitive variations, then individuals must differ developmentally wheneverthey encounter systematically diverse environments. Likewise, if a host of organismicfactors producevariations, then individuals must differ developmentally wheneverthey manifest systematic diversity in their organismic characteristics. Environmentaland organismic factors are not merely the conditions of performance (as opposed to competence); they are the conditions of development itself. However, most stage-based research on individual differences asks only two questions, both dictated by organismic-structural epistemology: (a) Doindividuals differ in maturity, i.e. do they occupydifferent stages along a single developmental sequence? (b) Do they differ in the speed of their passage throughthat sequence?In practice, most studies concern only the first of these questions; manifest differences in cognitive functioning are categorized into prescribed higher or lowerstages. The sequenceitself is seldomdirectly tested to determineif the stages indeed develop in the predicted order. Consequently, it is not possible to determinewhether individuals move through the sequence
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at different speeds, or indeed whether they movethrough it at all (Wohlwill 1973, Feldman1980, Fischer &Bullock 1981). In a few studies, the sequence is directly tested with methodsthat provide independent assessments of the various stages or levels (Fischer et al 1984). These methodsallow direct measurement of variation in the rate of stage progression. Nevertheless, even then the organismic-structuralperspective simplyrules out the possibility that manifest differences reflect movement along alternative sequences, and so methodsare used that preclude detection of such alternatives. A framework that conjoins organism and environment holds that people move through different developmentalsequences, different series of specific skills. There is neither a fixed organismnor a fixed environment to producea single, fixed developmentalsequence. It is important to recognize that the concepts of individual differences and universality in developmentalsequencesare not mutually exclusive (Fischer Bullock 1984). When behavior is analyzed in highly abstract terms, such as the criteria outlined above for the eight developmentallevels, all people maybe seen to develop through the same sequence. On the other hand, whenbehavior is analyzed in terms concrete enough to subsumeenvironmental context and organismicstate (without being limited to particular behaviors), then people can be seen to differ in both the content and the numberof steps in their developmental sequences. Fewstudies have assessed development in a way that allows the direct detection of individual differences. Nevertheless, there is someclear evidence of individual differences in sequences. In the study in whichMcCalland his colleagues (1977) demonstratedfour developmentallevels in infant test performance, they also found individual differences in more specific sequences. For example,if a 12-month-old girl was obedient, cooperative, and not highly active, she would most likely show high verbal skills at 24 months; this sequence was not prominent in boys. Individual differences in developmental sequences have also been found repeatedly in language development(Bloomet al 1975). For instance, somechildren seemto develop their first single words and global sentences at the sametime, whereasothers develop sentences only after single words(Peters 1977). The study of such differences requires methodsthat enable the detection of different sequences. In one of the most powerful and straightforward methods, children are assessed on multiple tasks that can be ordered in different ways. Then scalogram analyses are used to determine empirically what sequences obtain (Krus 1977). To demonstratea scalogramsequence, childrens performances on a series of tasks mustfall in an order such that all tasks are passedto a certain point and all are failed beyond that point. Onestudy using this method to assess the development of early reading skills foundthat a child could showany
of three different sequences (Knight 1982). Children whomanifested the most common sequence had no serious reading difficulties, but in the other two sequences children demonstrateddifficulties in spelling or rhyming. Literature concerning the roles of emotion and motivation in development provides powerful evidence that developmentcan proceed along diverse paths (Vaillant 1977, Selman 1980, Block 1982, Silvern 1984). A large body research indicates, for example, that the patterns of emotionin interactions betweenparent and infant can have potent effects on the course of the childs cognitive development(Sroufe 1979). Abuseof the child by the parents may have an especially potent effect, as suggested by recent research on the rare syndromeof multiple personality, in which the person constructs distinct, mutually incompatible personalities that control consciousness at different times (Bliss 1980, Fischer &Pipp 1984; F. Putnam et al, unpublisheddata). seems that most individuals with multiple personality suffered especially severe abuse at an early age. As a result, they developed along a sequence for constructing the self that was very different from the normal self sequence, even thoughit seemsto fit the samedevelopmental levels in the highly abstract terms of neostructural theories. Studies of psychopathologyprovide manyillustrations that emotional and motivational influences induce important differences in developmentalsequences. Sometimes these differences involve variations in relative maturity along a single dimension, as in retardation; but in manycases pathology involves developing differently rather than failing to develop (Block 1982, Fischer & Pipp 1984, Silvern 1984). For example, one popular hypothesis has been that childhood psychopathology,and particularly aggressiveness, arises from general structural immaturities in social perspective-taking or problemsolving. In contrast, collaborational formulations have emphasized that apparent immaturitiesare specific to contexts in whichaggressiveor socially isolated children have unusual emotionalreactions or atypical goals, or in whichthey make unusual hostile attributions about others intentions (Selman 1980, Watermanet al 1981, Dodge 1984). These disturbed children frequently manifest age-appropriatesocial cognition in situations that do not provoketheir peculiar context sensitivity. The crucial developmentalquestions about these children cannot be answered with a traditional structural analysis that rules out individual differences in context sensitivity. CONCLUSIONS: APPROACH BUILDING AN INTEGRATED
The research evidence is clear: Many studies have documented that cognitive development demonstrates some stage-like properties and some consistency across domains. Human beings seem to movethrough at least eight develop-
mentallevels between birth and 18 years of age. At the sametime, research also shows that environmental and organismic factors have powerful effects on levels, and individual differences in development seem to be common. Different children show different developmental patterns as a function of both environmentaland organismic factors. Our conclusion is that both stages and individual differences exist. Anyincompatibility between stages and individual differences arises not from nature but from two incompatible viewpoints--the organismic-structural approach and the mechanistic-functional approach. These approachesplace the primary locus of explanation of behavioral changeeither in the organismor in the environment, although there is someacknowledgment of the importance of both. The major theoretical constructs and the most common research designs focus on variation in either the organismor the environment,not in both. Manyscholars have recognized the difficulty with these incompatible approaches.Oneof the mainattempts to resolve the incompatibility has been to distinguish competencefrom performance and to hypothesize that stages are associated with the former and individual differences with the latter. While clearly a helpful step toward integrating organism and environment, compez tence/performance approaches in general suffer from a common shortcoming: Theycontinue to isolate the stages of organismicstructure (competence) from directly observable and variable ordinary functioning (performance). Anapproachis needed that conjoins organismand environment in its central methodsand explanatory constructs. Our favorite metaphorsfor that conjoin. ing are transaction and collaboration. Peopletransact with their environment or collaborate with it; they workwith and affect it, and it workswith and affects them. To movetoward such an approach, research designs should routinely incorporate variations in both important organismic variables, such as age, ability, and emotional state, and important environmentalvariables, such as task, practice, and environmentalsupport. Onlysuch comparativeresearch can reveal the full range of plasticity and constraint arising from cognitive levels and environmentalcontexts. Also, assessment techniques should be used that allow the detection of individual differences in developmentalsequences. Assessment must be sensitive to the possibility that people reason differently, not just more or less maturely. Theories should build explanatory constructs that simultaneously incorporate organismicand environmentalfactors. For example,the evidence suggests that behaviorin a domain varies along a developmental scale as a result not only of developing capacities but also of other factors, such as environmental support and arousal state. Competence does not seemto be a point but a range or zone on a developmental scale, with both environmental and organismic influences affecting movement within that zone.
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FISCHER & SILVERN
With the construction of a collaborational approach, we predict that researchers will finally be able to prove both the organismic-structural approach and the mechanistic-functional one. Under one specified set of assessment conditions, all people will develop through the same set of distinct levels and show high synchrony in the level they manifest across domains. Under another set of assess~nent conditions, people will develop separate skills in different domains, showing high unevenness across domains, substantial individual differences in their developmental patterns, and no evidence of stage-like change. Of course, the approach that specifies the conditions for these patterns of data will also treat them as merely two patterns from a wide range that includes both levels and individual differences in cognitive development. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank Carol Bach, Ann Boggiano, Daniel Bullock, Canfield, and Michael Westerman for their contributions to this article. Richard Prepa-
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STAGES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

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STAGES AND INDIVIDUAL

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