The shape of development

Abstract

This project examines the shape of conceptual development from early childhood through adulthood. To do so we model the attainment of developmental complexity levels in the moral reasoning of a large sample (n = 747) of 5-to 86-year-olds. Employing a novel application of the Rasch model to investigate patterns of performance in these data, we show that the acquisition of successive complexity levels proceeds in a pattern suggestive of a series of spurts and plateaus. We also show that there are six complexity levels represented in performance between the ages of 5 and 86; that patterns of performance are consistent with the specified sequence; that these findings apply to both childhood and adulthood levels; that sex is not an important predictor of complexity level once educational attainment has been taken into account; and that both age and educational attainment predict complexity level well during childhood, but educational attainment is a better predictor in late adolescence and adulthood.

Executive function in the first three years of life: Precursors, predictors and patterns

“…However, cognitive development frequently does not follow a linear developmental path, but rather cycles of EXECUTIVE FUNCTION IN THE FIRST 3 YEARS OF LIFE 53 jumps and drops (Dawson-Tunik, Commons, Wilson & Fischer, 2005). In each domain of interest, there may be different reasons for shifts in the trajectory of observable differences: in the case of control of attention there is evidence of a period of transition at around 9 months, during which attention systems become more unified; the way in which selfregulation manifests is partially influenced by developmental changes in reactivity and social interactions; improvements in processing speed interact to affect looking times in combination with attentional control; and performance on cognitive flexibility measures are in part linked to the interactive effects of task-specific demands, such as motor-control.…”

Khan Academy: The Illusion of Understanding

“…Understanding, the nature of which has been unpacked by over a century of research, is hierarchical in structure (Case 1987;Commons et al 1998;Fischer and Bidell 1998;Piaget 1983; van Geert 1998; Dawson-Tunik et al 2005). Each new achievement within the hierarchy becomes the foundation for the next more complex, more integrated coordination of earlier achievements.…”

“…Progress for students is, however, more nuanced than what is captured by these three major developmental steps. Within each tier researchers have noted finer degrees of achievement, described as levels (Commons et al 1998;Dawson-Tunik et al 2005;Fischer and Bidell 1998;Schwartz and Sadler 2007). For example, the first level of the representational tier signifies the ability to name objects, such as the object in the canoe (i.e., the anvil).…”

Dynamic cycles of cognitive and brain development: Measuring growth in mind, brain, and education

“…Skills in different domains demonstrate discontinuities along the same scale (Dawson-Tunik et al, 2005;Fischer & Bidell, 2006). The results are especially strong and clear for cognitive development and learning, where research has clearly demonstrated a single common scale for skill complexity across diverse contents and with different methods for assessing patterns of change.…”

“…In addition, a different set of methods have produced independent evidence of the same scale of seven levels in Table 8.1. Theo Dawson (Dawson & Wilson, 2004;Dawson-Tunik et al, 2005) pioneered this research, using Rasch analysis to scale item difficulty in extensive data sets based on interviews, standardized tests, essays, and other written materials. Rasch scaling detected exactly the same seven-level scale in these data sets, demonstrating clustering of items by complexity level and gaps along the complexity scale between the clusters.…”