Child Development Theories and Examples

Relativity And Universality Of Developmental Sequences

One of the best-established facts in cognitive development is that performance does not strictly adhere to stages. On the contrary, developmental stages vary widely with manipulations of virtually every environmental factor studied (Flavell, 1971, 1982b). Developmental unevenness, also called horizontal decalage (Piaget, 1941), seems to be the rule for development in general (Biggs and Collis, 1982; Fischer, 1980). During the school years it may well become even more common than in earlier years. By the time children reach school age they seem to begin to specialize on distinct developmental paths based on their differential abilities and experiences (Gardner, 1983; Horn, 1976; McCall, 1981). Some weak forms of developmental stages—what we have called levels—probably exist, as we have noted, but they occur in the face of wide variations in performance.
Since developmental unevenness has been shown to be pervasive, it seems inevitable that developmental sequences will vary among children and across contexts. Unfortunately, there have been few investigations testing for variations in sequence. Most of the studies documenting the prevalence of decalage are designed in such a way that they can detect only variations in the speed of development on a fixed sequence, not variations in the sequence itself. The dearth of studies testing for individual differences in sequence, apparently arises from the fact that cognitive developmentalists have been searching for commonalities in sequence, not differences.
Nevertheless, a few studies have expressly assessed individual differences, and their results indicate that different children and different situations do in fact produce different sequences (Knight, 1982; McCall et al., 1977; Roberts, 1981). A plausible hypothesis is that developmental sequences are relative, changing with the child, the immediate situation, and the culture.
To examine this hypothesis researchers must face an important hidden issue—the nature and generality of the classifications used to code successive levels or steps of behavioral organization. Indeed, when issues of classification are brought into the analysis, it becomes clear that universality and relativity of sequence are not opposed. With a general mode of analysis, children can all show the same developmental sequence in some domain, while with a more specific mode of analysis they can all demonstrate different sequences in the same domain.
Figure 3-1 helps show why. The arrows and solid boxes depict developmental paths taken by two children, boy X on the left and girl Y on the right. The letters in the boxes indicate the specific content of the behaviors at each step, and the hyphens connecting letters indicate that two contents have been coordinated or related. The word step is used to describe a specific point in a sequence without implying how that step relates to developmental levels such as those described above.