Child Development Theories and Examples

Figure 3-3

A systematic change in the proportion of children showing the same step in elicited imitation and free play. Adapted with permission from Watson & Fischer (1980). Copyright © American Psychological Association.
A similar design and method was used to test for an analogous phenomenon in adolescents. The developmental sequence involved the moral concepts of intention and responsibility. It was predicted that at the cognitive-developmental level of formal operations (also called "single abstractions") subjects would show the same highest step in a structured assessment and in a spontaneous condition. However, when they became capable of performing at the next developmental level, relations of abstractions, a major gap would appear between performance in the structured and spontaneous conditions. The prediction was supported. Once again, the highest developmental step that the individual demonstrated varied systematically as a function of both the individual's capacity and the environmental condition (Fischer et al., 1983).
In analyzing results of this sort a proponent of a noncollaborative approach would ask which condition provides the best assessment of the child's true competence. The collaboration theorist replies, "You've missed the point. Competence as traditionally assessed is a joint function of child and environment." The child does not have any true competence independent of particular environmental conditions. Competence varies with degree of support.
Even for an individual child research can be designed to investigate variations in both the child and the environment. Cole and Traupman (1983), for example, assessed a learning disabled child's capabilities using a range of cognitive tests and examined his performance in settings outside the classroom. They found that, in settings involving social interactions with other people, his disabilities were hardly noticeable because he used his social skills to compensate for them. Thus, the portrait of the child in a standard testing situation was vastly different from the portrait in a real-life social setting.
It is surprising how few cognitive-developmental studies have systematically varied characteristics of both child and environment. Typically, studies examine either changes with age and ability or changes resulting from environmental factors. In the infrequent studies that include variations in both child and environment, the interpretations often neglect the interaction and instead focus on the child and the environment separately. For example, many studies criticizing Piaget's work demonstrate that variations in environmental conditions produce developmental unevenness (decalage), but they seldom deal with the variations as a function of children's ages or abilities. Fortunately, there are a growing number of exceptions to this characterization—studies that seriously consider the effects of both child and environment on performance. The results of these studies are already beginning to transform explanations of cognitive development (see O'Brien and Overton, 1982; Rubin et al., 1983; Tabor and Kendler, 1981).