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In Search of a Metatheory for Cognitive Development (Or, Piaget Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself) Author(s): David F. Bjorklund Source: Child Development, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Feb., 1997), pp. 144-148Published by: on behalf of the Wiley Society for Research in Child DevelopmentStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1131932Accessed: 10-03-2015 02:39 UTC

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Child Development, February 1997, Volume 68, Number 1, Pages 144-148

In Search of a Metatheory for Cognitive Development (or, Piaget Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself)

David F. Bjorklund

With the waning of influence of Piaget's theory and the shortcomings of information-processing perspectives of cognitive growth, cognitive developmentalists lack a common set of broad, overarching principles and assumptions-a metatheory-to guide their research. Developmental biology is suggested as metatheory for cognitive development. Although it is important for developmentalists to understand proximal biological causes (e.g., brain development), most important for such a metatheory is an evolutionary perspective. Some basic principles of evolutionary psychology are introduced, and examples of contemporary research and theory consistent with these ideas are provided.

INTRODUCTION

The cognitive revolution changed the face of academic psychology, with developmental psychology being no exception. Success, however, had its cost. As Bruner (1990) pointed out, there was a focus to the cognitive revolution, and that was "meaning," a reaction to the mentalistically void behaviorism that had had a stranglehold on American psychology over most of the century. This focus has been lost in contemporary cognitive development. "Meaning" is now studied primarily by people interested in metacognition (e.g., Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1995), the effects of cultural context on thinking (e.g., Rogoff, 1990), or by social developmentalists following vari- ants of Bandura's (1986) social-cognitive theory, neo- Piagetian theory, or social information-processing approaches (e.g., Liben & Signorella, 1993; Stipek, Recchia, & McClintic, 1992). For psychologists such as these who study "meaning," to reduce cognitive development much below this level of analysis re- sults in an overabundance of details about children's performance on trivial tasks in unreal situations.

Other cognitive developmentalists have con- cluded that discerning meaning is not as simple as psychologists who study metacognition or social cognition believe, but involves a host of more elemen- tary, or basic processes, most of which are unconscious (e.g., Dempster, 1993; Reyna & Brainerd, 1995). From this perspective, asking "bigger" questions may be inherently pleasing, but not scientifically fruitful. For example, inquiring about metacognition or the role of self-awareness is seen as providing only interesting descriptions of consciousness and leaves us with the feeling that the "ghost in the machine" is still in charge.

In addition to losing our common focus, we have

also lost a common set of assumptions or principles about cognitive development; we have lost a metatheory. By metatheory, I do not mean a "theory about theories." Rather, I use the term much as Brainerd (1978) did in describing and evaluating Piagetian psychology to refer to some broad, overarching principles and assumptions-which may or may not be subject to experimental confirmation-that serve as a background for a host of more specific theories.

Piaget's metatheory was a great one. Researchers could heartily disagree about the specifics, but at the heart of development were still the functional invari- ants of organization and adaptation, the knowledge that development was a constructive process, and the principle of epigenesis. With the waning of Piaget's theory, a new metatheory took hold based on the assumptions of information-processing perspectives (e.g., limited capacity, serial processing of symbols, processing through a series of memory stores). Now, even this metatheory is crumbling in the face of evidence that calls into question some of the central ten- ets of the mind-as-a-computer metaphor (e.g., the possibility of parallel processing, modularity of resources, rejection of strategic approaches to problem solving; see, for examples, Brainerd & Reyna, 1990; Stanovich, 1990). The result is a diversity of approaches to the study of thinking and its development, and this is a plus. Like all modern sciences, maturity means diversity and specialization. The cost of this specialization, however, has been the loss of the ability to communicate with others who call themselves cognitive developmentalists, and this is unfortunate.

What we need to bring us together again is a single

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David F. Bjorklund 145

focus, or metatheory. It is apparent, however, that the metatheories of the past will not work. A new metatheory is needed that makes sense in terms of what psychologists are doing today and what we will likely be doing during the next 20 years. Although I do not have a true metatheory to propose, I do have a focus that I think most contemporary theorists and researchers of cognitive development should consider, and that is developmental biology, particularly as it relates to the new field of evolutionary psychology.

DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY AS A METATHEORY FOR COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

I use the term "developmental biology" broadly. As cognitive developmentalists, we should consider the development of the nervous system, the evolution of intelligence in the species, and the species-typical contexts in which cognition evolved and develops. This should be easy for developmentalists, for our entire discipline is implicitly based in biology. Devel- opment is a biological concept. Unlike other areas of experimental psychology that have their roots in physics, developmental psychology has its origins in turn-of-the-century embryology and evolutionary theory (Cairns, 1983).

Proximal Biological Causation

A knowledge of the developmental relation between brain and behavior has important implications, not only for theories of cognitive development, but also for societal practices. How pliable is human intelligence? When, in development, can children most benefit from certain educational experiences? Is earlier always better, or are there sensitive periods for particular experiences distributed throughout the course of development?

Evidence is accumulating showing greater plasticity of the mammalian brain than had been previously thought. This work, coupled with increasing knowledge of the course of human brain growth, has important implications for evaluating the role of experience on behavior and cognition (e.g., Greenough, Black, & Wallace, 1987). For example, Greenough and his associates (1987) pointed out how the nervous system of an animal is prepared for some experiences that all members of its species can expect, while other sets of neurons appear to await the idiosyncratic experiences that will vary from individual to individual. Such a distinction can be useful to the study of

human development, particularly issues of plasticity and the types of experiences that are apt to be important in infancy and early childhood.

In a similar vein, having a knowledge of brain development should help us predict and understand what type of cognition should develop at what times. For example, knowing that the frontal lobe is associ- ated with planfulness and the inhibition of prepotent responses (Diamond, 1991) clues us to when certain cognitive abilities will appear and mature. For stage theorists, knowledge of how the brain develops can be correlated with qualitative changes in cognitive abilities, giving the hypothesized discontinuities some basis in physical reality (e.g., Case, 1992).

Distal Biological Causation

As important as a knowledge of proximate biological causation is to understanding cognitive development, I doubt that this perspective alone could unite the diversity of people who today study cognitive development. A more likely candidate for this role is evolutionary theory. Evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology and could serve as the basis for a metatheory that unifies developmental psychologists of all ilk. Developmental psychology was begun by scholars interested in evolutionary concepts. Bald- win, Hall, and Piaget were among the more notable of our developmental forefathers who entered the field, in part, to get a better picture of human evolution. (Baldwin, in fact, has his name attached to an important evolutionary principle of preadaptation- the Baldwin effect.)

More recently, it has been suggested that cognitive psychology may be the "missing link" in the evolution of human behavior. Cosmides and Tooby (1987; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992) have proposed that it was information-processing mechanisms that evolved, and "these mechanisms in interaction with environ- mental input, generate manifest behavior. The causal link between evolution and behavior is made through psychological mechanisms" (Cosmides & Tooby, 1987, p. 277). According to Cosmides and Tooby, adaptive behavior is predicated on adaptive thought. Natural selection operates on the cognitive level-information-processing programs evolved to solve real-world problems. From this viewpoint, it becomes fruitful to ask what kind of cognitive opera- tions an organism must have "if it is to extract and process information about its environment in a way that will lead to adaptive behavior" (Cosmides & Tooby, 1987, p. 285). Also, evolutionary theory sug- gests that most cognitive programs evolved to ac-



146 Child Development

complish adaptive functions, what Cosmides and Tooby refer to as "Darwinian algorithms," and are domain-specific (i.e., modular) in nature.

Taking such an approach causes us to look at our data differently and to ask slightly different questions. For example, much research has focused on children's cognition on school-related tasks, often with the explicit aim of generalizing findings to education. Slightly different interpretations and prescrip- tions to educators may be made, however, by realiz- ing that formal schooling is "unnatural" (e.g., Pellegrini & Bjorklund, in press). Children's cognitions evolved in environments where reading and math seat-work did not exist, and children's diffi- culty with such tasks should be viewed as the norm and not the exception. Similarly, evolutionary theory holds that some abilities may have evolved to deal with problems that the organism faced in specific environments at a particular time in development (ontogenetic adaptations; see Oppenheim, 1981). When we ask, "How are children's cognitions adapted for the cultural contexts in which they find themselves rather than the contexts experienced by adults?" we may find different answers to frequently asked questions. From this perspective, not all aspects of infancy and early childhood are preparations for later development (e.g., Bjorklund, 1995; Bjorklund & Green, 1992; Turkewitz & Kenny, 1982) but exist to serve the child at that specific point in time only.

Evolutionary theory also places an emphasis on individual differences. Variation among individuals within a population is the stuff upon which natural selection works. Developmentalists, concerned with universals, often treat variability only as error. Indi- vidual variation is not error, however, but is real; these differences are important to society and may have different causes than developmental universals (Plomin & Ho, 1991). Moreover, some substantial portion of individual differences have their origins in genetics and others in prenatal or postnatal hormone exposure. Much individual variability is also caused by general experiential factors, of course, but one must have a biological theory, such as found in contemporary behavioral genetics (Plomin, 1989) or the developmental-systems approach (e.g., Gottlieb, 1991) to know which is which, which characteristics are more pliable, and which are resistant to change.

CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH AND THEORY

The number of examples of theory and research that are taking the view I am proposing has increased

sharply over the past decade. Several examples in- clude:

Gardner's (1983) popular theory of multiple intel- ligences that considers intelligence and its development in terms of evolutionary theory, cross-cultural data, and neuropsychological evidence, particularly cases of brain damage;

Current research and theory relating development of the frontal lobes with cognitive accomplishments over infancy (e.g., Diamond, 1991) and childhood (e.g., Dempster, 1993; Harnishfeger & Bjorklund, 1993);

Siegler's (1995, 1996) recent adoption of the Dar- winian metaphor of variation and selection to ac- count for the development of children's strategies and as a general model of cognitive development; and

A proposal by Geary (1995) classifies cognitive abilities into two categories: biologically primary, which includes those abilities that have been selected for in evolution, and biologically secondary, which are abilities that have not been selected for in evolution but rather are culturally instilled practices. Geary provides examples of the two types of abilities from his own area of research, children's mathematics, but the classification can be applied to any set of cognitive abilities and has important implications not only for understanding the development of different skills but also for their educability.

I am not advocating that cognitive developmental psychologists retool to become developmental biologists. Developing a theory of the brain is important, of course, but that is not our job, and it is not enough. Having a theory of the brain does not obviate having a theory of the mind. Cognitive psychology is not just something to do until the biologists get better at their trade. What I am arguing is not a blind acceptance of all that biologists have to tell us, but merely that we be mindful of the proximal and distal biological causes of cognitive development and formulate our theories and design our experiments accordingly. Thus, for example, researchers concerned with the development of social perspective taking or of the origins of self-concept should be aware of the social context in which human intelligence develops and with theories that postulate social forces as providing a strong impetus for the evolution of human intelligence (e.g., Byrne & Whiten, 1988; Humphrey, 1976; see Tomasello, Kruger, & Ratner, 1993, for a recent theory that does this). Similarly, researchers concerned with the development of basic processes should consider the evolutionary pressures that may have produced these particular processes as well as



David F. Bjorklund 147

the neurological systems that underlie them (e.g., Bjorklund & Harnishfeger, 1995; Geary, 1996).

CLOSING REMARKS

I realize that we could be criticized for getting into something that is none of our business. We are psychologists, and without further training we are apt to come up with naive theories based on oversimplified conceptions of the brain and evolution (see Morss, 1990). This is a criticism specialists in all fields make to interlopers; but I believe the errors we make will be worth the effort. By adopting a metatheory that views cognitive development as a natural conse- quence of species-typical behavior in a species-typical environment that has evolved to solve certain problems, we will make progress. We will ask better questions and collect better data.

I take this last point seriously. Having a "big picture" of cognitive development will mean that our questions will be posed not only to answer certain narrowly defined hypotheses, but to make sense in terms of our metatheory. Much data collected by contemporary cognitive developmentalists may be methodologically solid and yield "good" data, in that they nicely support or refute a hypothesis. But when the theory that generated the experiment dies, the data often are forgotten, and appropriately so. This is less apt to happen when there is a larger focus behind one's specific theory. Piaget's work is a case in point. Piaget's theory has been soundly criticized, to the point that much of it is regarded as flat-out wrong. Yet the data he collected remain important-they are significant independent of the theory-and this I believe is due, at least in part, to the broad, biologically based ideas that served as underpinnings of his theory. Much of what Piaget was concerned with in- volved children's developing understanding of the physical world-the permanence of objects, the con- servation of physical quantities, the knowledge of numbers. Piaget studied cognitive problems that all members of our species face, and would have faced in our environment of evolutionary adaptiveness. Our own questions need not always share this uni- versality, but they should address problems couched in a theory that is likely to be viewed as valid genera- tions hence. Evolutionary theory, I believe, is such a theory.

Believing in biology will not make us into modem- day Piagets. Genius requires more than just a set of principles to follow. But it will, I believe, result in our collecting more important and long-lasting data, and

perhaps getting us to communicate with one another again.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An earlier version of this article was presented at the meetings of the Society for Research in Child Devel- opment, April 1991, Seattle, WA. I would like to thank Barbara R. Bjorklund, Katherine Kipp, and Rhonda Douglas for comments on drafts of the manuscript. This essay was completed while the author was supported by National Science Foundation research award SBR-9422177.

ADDRESS AND AFFILIATION

Corresponding author: David F. Bjorklund, Florida Atlantic University, Department of Psychology, Boca Raton, FL 33431; e-mail: [email protected].

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Article Contentsp. [144]p. 145p. 146p. 147p. 148

Issue Table of ContentsChild Development, Vol. 68, No. 1, Feb., 1997Front MatterEmpirical ArticlesBiobehavioral Development, Perception, and ActionSimilarities and Differences in Behavioral State Organization during Sleep Periods in the Perinatal Infant before and after Birth [pp. 1 - 11]Early Predictors of Attachment in Infants with Cleft Lip and/or Palate [pp. 12 - 25]Early Malnutrition and Child Neurobehavioral Development: Insights from the Study of Children of Diabetic Mothers [pp. 26 - 38]

Cognition and LanguageThe Development of Children's Knowledge about Inner Speech [pp. 39 - 47]Do Children with Autism Use the Speaker's Direction of Gaze Strategy to Crack the Code of Language? [pp. 48 - 57]

Personality and Social DevelopmentRitual, Habit, and Perfectionism: The Prevalence and Development of Compulsive-Like Behavior in Normal Young Children [pp. 58 - 68]Toddlers' Acquisition of Self/Other Knowledge: Ecological and Interpersonal Aspects of Self and Other [pp. 69 - 79]The Emergence of Solitude as a Constructive Domain of Experience in Early Adolescence [pp. 80 - 93]

Relationships and InteractionsMutually Responsive Orientation between Mothers and Their Young Children: Implications for Early Socialization [pp. 94 - 112]Children's Understanding of Parental Differential Treatment [pp. 113 - 126]Children's Narrative Representations of Mothers: Their Development and Associations with Child and Mother Adaptation [pp. 127 - 138]

EssaysTemperament and the Reactions to Unfamiliarity [pp. 139 - 143]In Search of a Metatheory for Cognitive Development (Or, Piaget Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself) [pp. 144 - 148]

Child Development and...Child Development and the Social Demography of Childhood [pp. 149 - 169]

Back Matter [pp. 170 - 171]

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