Child Development Theories and Examples

Rule-Assessment Methods

Developmental sequences are a central concern in cognitive research, but an emphasis on the relations of behavior across contexts highlights the centrality of a second, related issue: the generality or breadth of applicability of a skill or scheme. A full analysis of the skill underlying a behavior should predict not only where that behavior will fall in a developmental sequence but also how the skill will be evident across a range of contexts.
In recent years several investigators have elaborated a set of methods for assessing the rules underlying a behavior and explaining how those rules apply across contexts (Klahr and Wallace, 1976; MacWhinney, 1978; Siegler, 1981). Siegler (1983) provides an especially clear statement of the logic of rule assessment and focuses on school-age children (as does most rule-assessment research).
Typically, ''rule'' refers to a mental procedure whose operation affects performance on many problems within a task domain. Virtually all of the various approaches to specifying rules derive from the theory of production systems (Newell and Simon, 1972), which analyzes human behavior in terms of systems of rules for generating actions. A rule is defined in terms of a condition-action pair, in which the condition for taking some action is specified abstractly. For example, in simple arithmetic tasks involving division, such as 13 divided by 3, a sequence of rules can be used to describe the division procedure. After an estimate has been made of the whole number required in the quotient, a rule applies for dealing with what is left over, the remainder: If the remainder is less than the divisor, a fraction is made, with the remainder as the numerator and the divisor as the denominator. The "if" clause specifies the condition, and the "then" clause gives the action to be followed. For 13 divided by 3 the estimated whole number is 4. Application of the rule leads to the following procedure: The remainder of 1 is less than the divisor of 3, and therefore the remainder is made into a fraction of 1/3.
To use this rule across division problems, the child must check the current situation to see whether it meets the condition specified in the rule. Such checking can be done only if the rule is represented in some general format. To start with, the child must be able to distinguish which number is currently serving as remainder and which as divisor. Neither remainder nor divisor can be specified in the rule in terms of particular numerical values, such as 1 and 3, respectively, because across problems all numbers can be in both categories.
Researchers can determine whether a child is using such a rule in some set of problems by testing him or her on a number of division problems. The child is said to be using the rule whenever the pattern of behaviors (answers or methods of solution) on some set of the problems fits the rule. The child does not have to state the rule explicitly.
Though the concept of "rule" was controversial two decades ago, today it provides a basis for one of the most promising approaches for exact specification of the cognitive structures underlying child performance. Indeed, it also promises more generally to provide a powerful tool for describing change and continuity in cognitive organization.
In practice, research based on the rule-assessment approach has been characterized by two prominent features. First, it has provided highly differentiated models of regularities in behavior across contexts, including not only correct performances but also errors. This research has articulated the Piagetian hypothesis that errors form coherent patterns that derive from developmentally immature procedures (see Roberts, 1981; Siegler, 1981, 1983). Thus, both errors and correct performances can serve as indexes of the current state of a child's rule system for a particular task domain.
Second, the rule-assessment approach has fostered what might be called a "particulate" view of the child's mind. The methods are designed to detect rules in specified, interrelated tasks, in which the rules are described in terms closely tied to the tasks. Changes in performance are typically explained in terms of modifications, additions, or deletions of particular rules. Just as the philosopher Hume was criticized for depicting the mind as a "bundle of perceptions," some researchers who use rule-assessment techniques might be criticized for depicting the mind as a bundle of rules. Although such localism avoids the postulation of global, vague cognitive metamorphoses, it is in danger of treating the child too narrowly—as merely a solver of division problems, for example.
This pull toward the particular seems to be necessary if researchers are to deal with the effects of specific environments, but there is no need to stop with the particular. In some work in this tradition, children's goals figure in the definition of every rule, and these goals can apply across situations. Moreover, the idea of a rule system seems to have within it the seeds of an approach that combines the particular with the general, because rules must articulate with one another in such a system (Anderson, 1982; Siegler and Klahr, 1982) and because the construction of rules must be determined in part by the general nature of the child's information-processing system.
What seems to be required is the construction of a framework that expressly integrates methods for examining large-scale developmental changes, such as the general developmental levels, with approaches for analyzing particular rule systems. Toward this end, a straightforward approach would combine the use of developmental scales to analyze broad-scale patterns with the use of rule-assessment methods to analyze particular sets of tasks included in those scales. Thus, developmentalists can move toward a richer, fuller portrait of the development of the child in context.
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