Horizontal Decalages and Individual Differences in the Development of Concrete Operations

Reuchlin et Piaget

“…Le choix que nous avons fait a été d'en utiliser plusieurs, reposant sur des postulats différents et d'en comparer les résultats. L'une s'appuyait sur une analyse qualitative des conduites, codées en matière de dimensions de transformations (Rieben, de Ribaupierre, & Lautrey, 1983) ; une autre s'appuyait sur l'analyse hiérarchique des items à l'intérieur de chaque épreuve et les méthodes de corrélation ordinales (de Ribaupierre, Rieben, & Lautrey, 1985) ; une autre enfin n'admettait pas le postulat selon lequel les différents items d'une épreuve, codés ici en termes de réussite / échec, relèvent d'une même dimension et en analysait la structure par une analyse des correspondances (Lautrey, de Ribaupierre, & Rieben, 1985).…”

Commentary

“…Individual differences are thus due to different types of interactions between maturation and environmental con straints. In contrast, we have recommended elsewhere [Lautrey, 1993;de Ribaupierre, 1993;de Ribaupierre et al, 1991;Rieben et al, 1990] adoption of a pluralistic approach, in which cognitive development is viewed as overdetermined by a number of organismic processes. Individual differences accordingly result from variable types of interactions, not only between processes and environment or between different structures, but also among the underlying processes.…”

“…They attest to the re surgence of structuralist approaches, after a relatively long period during which emphasis was placed, at least among North American developmentalists, on domain-specific ap proaches [Case, 1992b;Dasen and de Ribau pierre, 1987;de Ribaupierre, 1993], Case's approach in addition attempts to take into account the numerous observations of asyn chrony in development. According to Case, a CCS is general in that it applies to a broad range of situations; as such it is subject to sys tem-wide processing constraints (although these are not very clearly spelled out) and is central to cognitive development.…”

“…Piaget's theory becomes very ambiguous when applied to the psychological individual; it can easily be understood as meaning that all individuals develop in exactly the same way. Piaget did nothing to resolve this ambiguity, except in paying occasional lip service to the large inter-and intra-individual variability to be found in cognitive organizations [Chap man, 1988;de Ribaupierre, 1993].…”

Gradual Belief Change in Children

“…Piaget [1971], for example, is famously pessimistic about the possibility of constructing a general theory of what he called 'horizontal decalages', or differences in timing between the successful application of a supposedly general skill in one arena and its successful application elsewhere. (Some neo-Piagetians have attempted, however, to provide more structure for understanding patterns of horizontal decalage [e.g., Case, 1992;Kreitler and Kreitler, 1989;Ribaupierre, Rieben, and Lautrey, 1985]). Chomsky's [1965] competence/performance distinction is sometimes invoked in describing the cognitive state of children whose performance on related tasks is variable.…”