The nature(s) of developmental change: Piaget, Vygotsky, and the transition process

~ t Pergamon New Ideas in Psychol. Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 195-210, 1997.

~.~ 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved

0732-118X/98 $19.00 + 0.00 PlI." S0732--118X(97)10001--0

THE NATURE(S) OF DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGE: PIAGET, VYGOTSKY, AND THE TRANSITION PROCESS

DAVID HENRY FEL, DMAN* Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155,

U.S.A.

and

R. CLARKE FOWLER Education Department, Salem State College, Salem, MA 01970, U.S.A.

Abstract--This essay proposes (I) that more than one kind of large-scale developmental change exists; and (2) that more than one kind of developmental change mechanism is needed to explain them. These proposals are supported by work in nonuniversal theory which states that intellectual development should be characterized neither as domain-general nor as domain- specific, but as a spectrum of developmental domains that range from the universal to the unique. The current article extends nonuniversal theory by positing and then describing (1) a sixth region of development--a pancultutal region: and (2) five basic change mechanisms (maturation, domain-specific struclures, technologies, instruction, and equilibration) that differentially influence developmental change at particular points along the universal-to-unique continuum. The contributions of each of the five change mechanisms is illustrated by an analysis of children's ability to draw maps. The value of the universal to unique framework is demonstrated by showing how it helps resolve Piaget's and Vygotsky's seemingly contradictory views on the relationship between learning and development..~ 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

INTRODUCTION

The questions to be pursued but of course not fully answered in this essay are: whether or not there is more than one kind of large-scale cognitive developmental change, and if so, is there more than one kind of mechanism required to account for such developmental changes? In other words, what is the range and variety of forms of change that can be usefully labelled developmental and the range and variety of cognitive developmental mechanisms necessary to account lor them?

*Author for correspondence.

195

196 D.H. Feldman and R. C. Fowler

NONUNIVERSAL DEVE, I_,OPMENTAL THEORY

The framework within which we will be considering the questions of interest is nonuniversal developmental theory (Feldman, 1980, 1987, 1994; see also Horowitz, 1987). This is certainly not the only framework which has explicitl~y tried to grapple with issues of large scale, relatively abrupt, progressive change (cf. Carey, 1986; Case, 1992; Demetriou, Efklides, & Plastidou, 1993; Fischer & Farrar, 1988; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Keil, 1989; van der Maas & Molenaar, 1992; van Geert, 1991). Nonuniversal theory, however, has certain features that lend themselves to the purpose of characterizing different kinds of developmental change.

A number of years ago Feldman proposed a distinction between two sorts of large-scale cognitive developmental change phenomena and then labelled these phenomena universal and nonuniversal (Feldman, 1980. Feldman, 1994). He argued that there exist at least two broad sorts of developmental changes: those that are essentially guaranteed to occur in all normal human beings in all normal human environment,;; and those that will occur only in a subset of human beings within a subset of more specialized environments.

Further, Feldman argued that, among nonuniversal developmental changes, there are additional distinctions to be made, distinctions gathered together along a continuum of "regions of developmental change," each with distinctive qualities that describe its specific nature. This framework was called the universal-to-unique continuum of domains of cognitive developmental change (see Fig. 1).

Although there were differences described between and among the various regions of developmental domains, as they are called within the universal-to-unique framework, it was assumed that fundamentally similar transition processes governed change in all regions of the continuum. The domains within each of the regions were assumed to differ in important ways, but the processes of change that brought them about in the first place, and led to increased levels of mastery within them for individuals, were claimed to be fundamentally lhe same.

The process that was believed to account for developmental changes at all points along the universal-to-unique continuum was based on Piaget's equilibration mechanism (Piaget, 19"70, Piaget, 1971, Piaget, 1975). At that poim the main empirical support for both the sequence of levels and the common transition process came from research with children's map drawing (Feldman, 1971, 1980; Norman, 1980: Snyder & Feldman, 1977, 1984).

Universal

Pancultural

Cultural

Discipline Based

Idiosyncratic

Unique

Fig. I. Kinds of developmental change, based nn the universal-to-unique continuum from Feldman (1994).

Developmental change 197

Although there was no direct test of the assumptiion of a common change mechanism in the map drawing research, it seemed a parsimonious position to hold until further evidence could be gathered. It was also a way of providing a theoretical rationale for placing such a diverse set of domains on a single continuum.

Robert Campbell (1993) has characterized nonuniversal theory as described above as occupying a middle ground among domain-specific theories of cognitive development, falling between those theories that assume that all developmental advances must occur through the same kind of sequence of recursive levels, but may do so domain by domain (e.g., Case, 1992; Fischer & Farrar, 1988), and other theories that assume that each domain has its own distinct transition mechanisms (e.g., Keil, 1989). In nonuniversal theory, the mechanisms are assumed to be the same across all domains, but each content domain may have its own special set of developmental levels (Feldman, 1980, 1994), with influences between and among sequences in different domains left more or less unspecified (Bullock & Fischer, 1981).

As Campbell points out, the term "domain" has for the field itself proven to be problematic, suffers from overuse, and refers to different sorts of things in different theories (Campbell, 1993, p. 172; see also Wellman & Gelman, 1992).

Specifying the nature of developmental domains Jis crucial to being able to make headway on the problem of the nature of developmental change mechanisms. It is crucial that the meanings of these terms be as clearly specified as possible; unless we are able to say what is specifically a developmental change, as well as what is a domain, our claims will be vague and difficult to evaluate, let alone capable of empirical test (cf. Demetriou et al., 1993).

At this point, however, it has become clear that the original version of nonuniversal theory was overly optimistic about the power of equilibJration or equilibration-like mechanisms to account for all developmental transitions in all regions of the universal-to-unique continuum. Most importantly, equilibration is not sufficient to account for human creativity--a phenomenon that both Piagetian (Bringuier, 1980) and nonuniversal theory (Feldman, 1989) explicitly seek to explain. The continuum itself, however, seems to still serve a useful purpose by providing a set of distinctions between and among various kinds of developmental domains.

Improvements are therefore needed in both the conceptual and theoretical specification of the key issues pertaining to developmental change mechanisms within nonuniversal theory. If the theory is currently well suited to organize categories; of developmental change because of the range and variety of developmental domains it encompasses, it is less well suited to explore differences in change mechanisms that might opera,re at different points along the universal-to- unique continuum.

For nonuniversal theory to be more useful as a framework for discussing developmental change, it is therefore necessary to do two things: clarify the meaning of what development and developmental change mean within the theory; and augment the theory's change process with other processes that are likely to be inw)lved in specifically developmental transitions.

DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGE AND DOMAINS OF DEVELOPMENT

What is developmental change? Within nonuniversal theory, it is change that tends to be of a large scale, qualitative, irreversible, relatively abrupt sort, and that involves substantial transformation of existing systems or structures of the growing organism; only in extreme cases does developmental change transform the domain as well IFeldman & Goldsmith, 1991; Feldman, 1994; Feldman, Csikszentmihalyi, & Gardner, 1994).


Developmental change also usually implies stages or levels, typically in a unilinear sequence, although not necessarily. Stage or level shifts are the primary examples within nonuniversal theory of what is meant by a developmental shift. The extent to which a "stage" reflects overall cognitive structures or some subset within a "domain" varies from theory to theory, but it is always assumed that the succeeding stage or level is more powerful, more mature, more adaptive, and more desirable than the previous stage or level (although see Benjamin, 1989).

What is a domain? For nonuniversal theory, a developmental domain is one that is characterized by a sequence of developmental levels that are acquired through the application of a set of transition mechanisms or processes (Feldman, 1980, 1994). Criteria for determining the extent to which a domain can be characterized as developmental as well as nonuniversal include: how well marked a domain's levels are (e.g., chess ratings): the existence of technical terms or specialized symbols or symbol systems that deal specifically with that domain (e.g., musical notation, medical terminology, the periodic chart in chemistry); a "field" that has grown up around the domain to serve purposes such as recruitment, selection, training, recognition, financial support, outlets for products, etc. (e.g., art galleries, Nobel Prizes, music festivals, cf. Csikszentmihalyi (1994); formal techniques for transmitting the specialized knowledge contained within a domain (e.g., art schools, pilot training, military academies).

Domains within nonuniversal theory are not categories of cognitive functioning such as perception, problem solving, strategy formation ~e.g., Siegler & Jenkins, 1989) and the like, nor are they system-wide structures such as those proposed by other broad-gauge developmental theories such as Campbell and Bickhard (1992), Carey (1986), Demetriou et al. (1993), and Karmiloff-Smith (I 992).

Developmental levels in domains are tied to specific bodies of knowledge to a greater extent in nonuniversal theory than they tend to be in other theories. While it is assumed that only individuals with the appropriate general cognitive structures could move through the levels of nonuniversal domains (cf. Case, 1991), the emphasis is more on the nature of the levels of expertise within the domains themselves than on trying to define structures of a general, cross- domain sort (Feldman, 1980, 1994).

To illustrate the usefulness of nonuniversal theory as a way of organizing the discussion about different sorts of developmental change and different change mechanisms to bring them about, we will consider how two prominent theories--those of Piaget and Vygotsky--differ in relation to their conceptions of learning versus development and the mechanisms for bringing about these kinds of changes.

DEVELOPMENT 1N PIAGET AND VYGOTSKY

The core of Piaget's theoretical position was that children must c o n s t r u c t more powerful structures through their actions and activities, both physical and mental (Bringuier, 1980; Piaget, 1970, 1971, 1975, 1982; Piattelli-Palmarini, 1980). In spite of his best efforts to explain just how children are able to construct qualitalively more powerful mental structures, he was not satisfied that he had done so adequately (Piaget, 1971, 1982); nor, of course, have his many critics been satisfied (e.g., Brief, 1983; Feldman, 1987; Fodor, 1980, 1981).

As David Hawkins, a philosopher of science and student of education, wrote more than two decades ago:


When it is considered analytically as a mode of abstraction, the developmentalist scheme is inadequate to the deepest and most central concerns of education. It is inadequate because it buries under a metaphor just that level of interaction between "development" and "'learning" without which our species would lack its most distinctive characteristics (Hawkins, 1974, p. 237).

The problem, Hawkins argues, is that learning and development are in reciprocal relationship as opposed to Piaget 's idea that one (development) leads to the other (learning). Rather than development setting the stage for and making possible the learning that takes place in classrooms, Hawkins argued, learning and development mutually influence each other.

An even stronger position for learning was taken many years earlier by Vygotsky (Cole, John-Steiner, Scribner, & Souberman, 1978), who argued that learning is the process through which it becomes possible to enhance conceptual ,,structures. Vygotsky makes the claim that "the only 'good learning' is that which is in advance of development" (Cole et at., 1978, p. 89). Vygotsky, thus, seems to argue almost precisely the contrary position from Piaget' s: learning is essential for development to become possible, wl~ereas Piaget argues that development is essential for learning to become possible.

These two positions can be juxtaposed to produce a conflict between development and learning that seems to be quite unresolvable. Unless one were to be able to conceive of a critical experiment which would prove one ~r the other position to be the correct one, we would seem to be impaled on the horns of a dilemma.

It is readily apparent that the process through which more advanced intellectual structures are acquired differs sharply in the two accounts. What :is less apparent is that the two theories are actually referring to diff~erent kinds of things when they refer to development.

A start toward resolving the apparent conflict between the positions taken on development by Piaget and Vygotsky can be made by looking at their conceptions in relation to the universal-to-unique framework. The so called '"learning paradox", which refers to the seeming impossibility of creating more powerful structures from less powerful ones, can be similarly reconceptualized so that it becomes ]less of a paradox and simply refers to different regions of the universal-to-unique continuum (Bereiter, 1985; Campbell & Bickhard, 1987: Molenaar, 1986; Smith, 1994).

RESOLVING THE PIAGET/VYGOTSKY CONFLICT

In his commentary on Vygotsky's Thought and Language, Piaget (1962) discusses points of agreement and disagreement between his own position and that of Vygotsky. Most of the discussion is on egocentrism and egocentric speech, an important topic but one not central to the present discussion. It is in his consideration of Vygotsky's comments on "spontaneous" versus "scientific" knowledge development and their relation to school learning that the differences between the two great theorists become more apparent.

Piaget writes: "When Vygotsky concluded fi'om his reflections on my earliest books that the essential task of child psychology was to study the formation of scientific concepts in following step by step the process unfolding under our eyes, he had no inkling that such was exactly my program" And a sentence or two later:

I later published a series of studies dealing with the development of the concepts of number, of physical quantity, of motion, speed, and lime, of space, of chance, of the induction of


physical laws, and of the logical structure of classes, relations, and propositions--in brief, with most of the basic scientific concepts (Piaget, 1962, pp. 9-10).

In fact, these topics are not primarily what Vygotsky meant by "scientific" concepts. For Vygotsky, scientific concepts represented a broad range of mostly academic subjects, including concepts from history and the arts as well as from the natural sciences, as Chapter 6 of Thought and Language makes clear.

The word scient~[~c is used by Vygotsky to refer to concepts that: have become established parts of a culture's store of knowledge; are relatively formal in nature; and can be transmitted through instruction. Vygotsky did not mean natural (or even social) science concepts, nor did he mean logical concepts by the term scientific, at least not exclusively. He meant to include economic and geographic concepts, arithmetic as well as basic number concepts, and certainly concepts from the study of history and literature, the central disciplines in Vygotsky's value system.

Piaget therefore distorted (or assimilated) Vygotsky's claims to fit with his own agenda, a tendency seen more than once in Piaget's writings (cf. Voneche, 1982). Vygotsky meant to draw attention to mostly traditional school subjects and school curricula by his notion of scientific and nonspontaneous concepts, whereas Piaget was referring to fundamental, spontaneous understandings of the physical world and of logical relations when he used the term.

Both theorists recognized that there is a vital relationship between spontaneous and nonspontaneous concepts, but Piaget put scientific concepts into the spontaneous category, while Vygotsky put: them into the nonspontaneous category. This difference in categorizing reveals a crucial difference between what Piaget meant by development and what Vygotsky meant by development.

When describing development Piaget is referring to universal, spontaneous acquisition of fundamental cognitive structures that are believed to pertain to all knowledge and are foundational and prerequisite to the acquisition and understanding of any knowledge. For Vygotsky, development refers to nonuniversal, nonspontaneous acquisition of knowledge and understanding valued within a particular cultural context and within specific domains.

One of the advantages of nonuniversal theory is that these two kinds of development can be placed within different regions of the univer,~al-to-unique continuum. Piaget's notion of development falls within the universal region, while Vygotsky's falls within the region of cultural domains.

This resolution of the Piaget/Vygotsky controversy becomes problematic, though, once the discussion shifts from the domain of development to the mechanism(s) of developmental change within a domain. The problem is that, as originally formulated, nonuniversal theory posited the existence of one central change mechanism--equilibration--but the theories under consideration involve two very different kinds of change mechanisms. We will say more about the nature and the current resolution of this problem after commenting on the respective change mechanisms posited by Piaget and Vygotsky.

F~r Vygotsky, who sought to explain uniquely human and nonuniversal forms of knowledge, it is instruction [or more accurately, joint participation in a zone of proximal development (ZPI)) under the guidance of a more experienced coparticipant (Cole et al., 1978; Rogoff, 1990; Smith, 1994)] that is the central process through which all nonspontaneous concepts, scientific and nonscientific alike, develop. Vygotsky did acknowledge the existence of some univer,,;al developmental processes that proceed in a spontaneous way, but be saw them as more of a


backdrop to development than did Piaget, and as secondary rather than central to the development of human reasoning (Cole et al., 1978).

The principal problem with Vygotsky's proposed change process, however, is that, other than the ZPD, Vygotsky provided little information about how and why an individual would acquire bodies of knowledge about speech, writing, drawing, quantifying, and the like. Although imitation plays a critically important role in Vygotsky's framework, there is little fine grain to Vygotsky's account of the change process.

For Piaget, who sought to explain the developmem not of uniquely human knowledge, but of knowledge in any living: organism (Bringuier, 1980), it is not instruction but equilibration (Piaget, 1975) which is the central mechanism of development. Indeed, Piaget carried out a lifelong struggle to establish his version of constructivism as neither a playing out of innate abilities nor as a function of specific transmitted knowledge (Bringuier, 1980; Piaget, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1982; Piattelli-Palmarini, 1980~; equilibration was his response to this challenge,

Equilibration has proven, however, to be problematic within genetic epistemology because a requirement of Piagetian universal structures is that they cannot be directly taught; they also cannot be productively accelerated through intervent:ion, and yet they are nonetheless somehow achievable, if not always achieved, by all children in all cultures. Although rejected by Piaget, the only sort of mechanisms that might meet the specifications he laid down for the deep underlying cognitive structures so elegantly described by the Genevans would have to be heavily maturational (cf. Beilin, 1971; Carey & Gelman, 1991; Piattelli-Palmarini, 1980), Indeed, the position taken here is that there may well exist broad changes in the human mind that profoundly affect the kinds of knowledge that children can acquire, but that these changes are better described as brain and central nerwms system constraints than as overall cognitive structures, more or less along the lines that Case (1985, 1991) and Fischer (1980; Fischer & Farrar, 1988) have proposed.

The kind of change mechanism required for universal, spontaneously achieved system transformations is therefore probably not primarily equilibration. On the contrary, equilibration is more likely to be an essential aspect to the kinds of changes that Vygotsky described at the social level.

Equilibration adds essential texture to Vygotsky's sketchy and perhaps excessively social account of how learning hastens and awakens more advanced developmental levels within culturally valued domains. If Piaget's account p]laces too much emphasis on individual construction, Vygotsky's places too much emphasis on social transmission. If equilibration plays a more minor role than Piaget thought in the acquisition of underlying nerwms system transfi)rmations, it no doubt plays a more major role in the acquisition of social and cultural knowledge than Vygotsky imagined.

Indeed, if we bracket the regions of the universal-to-unique continuum between universal and cultural, we might envision a set of change mechanisms that range from very heavily maturational (e.g., changes in the types of connections among neurons) to mechanisms more heavily social and requiring specialized cultural resources for their successful achievement (e.g., knowledge about the social conventions and rules in a particular social group). More maturationally based processes and more socially based processes are involved in all instances of developmental change.' within these regions, but the proportions and possibly the specific functions of each mechanism might vary from domain to domain (cf. Horowitz, 1987).

At this point it is possible to return to the problem noted earlier in this section: that, as originally formulated, nonuniversal theory proposed that one change mechanism---equilibra- t ion--was central to developmental change along all points of the universal-to-unique


continuum. Evidence has continued to mount, however, that more than one mechanism must be involved in each region of the developmental landscape. Indeed, we have argued that equilibration does not adequately explain the universal features of human cognition that it was intended to explain. While equilibration is very likely involved across all of the different regions of the universal-to-unique continuum, a change mechanism of the equilibration sort is only central within a subset of the regions of the continuum. Equilibration-like processes are almost certainly necessa O, for developmental change to occur in all regions, but they must be supplemented with additional processes at every point along the continuum.

LANGUAGE AS A SPECIAL CASE

It is interesting to consider the case of language acquisition (or expression) in light of the discussion up to this point. As is well known, Piaget placed language in a much less privileged place than did Vygotsky (Fowler, 1994, Wozniak, 1987). Piaget saw language as one among several manifestations of the "semiotic function," a major advance into symbolic functioning begun around 2 years of age. For Vygotsky, however, language plays a crucial role in making possible distinctly human experience, providing the essential mediating vehicle for creation of a sense of past, present, and future, and lbr freeing the child from the response demands of an immediate perceptual situation (Cole et al., 1978, pp. 26-28).

How a child acquires language differs as well within the two theoretical fi'ameworks. From Piaget's point of view, there is no special mechanism required for language acquisition, nor is there any specialized process required to teach it to the young of the species. The same processes of equilibration, maturation, social transmission, and experience would account for language acquisition as for any other body of knowledge about the world (Wozniak, 1987).

The same capabilities that evolve during the first 18 months of life and that prepare the child to achieve operational logical structures haw~ also prepared the child to learn language, according to Piaget. Although Piaget recognized that language is an important human capability, his emphasis on universal structures of reasoning prevented him from singling out any single symbolic medium as having more privileged status than any other. Essentially, Piaget's interest in the fundamental nature of knowledge acquisition across species and across knowledge domains led him to see language as simply one way that human beings represent and communicate their understandings of the world. If anything, Piaget placed less and less emphasis on language over time, thinking that it stood in the way of more direct examination of ew)lving cognitive structures (Wozniak, 1987).

For Vygotsky, language is the human achievement par excellence, and literacy and literature the most powerful forms of knowing and unde, rstanding available within human social groups. Language as a social medium is the source of knowledge about most other important bodies of knowledge, and is also the vehicle through which internal control, strategy formation, problem solving and planning functions are achieved, the so-called "inner speech" that Vygotsky described so eloquently in Thought and Language (1934/Vygotsky, 1962).

Word meaning and its evolution over time in individuals and in societies was, ~i)r Vygotsk~, the basic unit of psychological analysis for human psychological inquiry. To understand how children come to use words, to attach meaning ~Eo them, and to guide and represent experience based on them was the main preoccupation of his short life. He believed that the sharing of literate understandings, indeed literature itself., was the greatest gift that one generation couhl give to the next.


It would appear that language may indeed need to be placed in a special category among developmental domains since it seems to be an important test case for change mechanisms in both Piagetian and Vygotskian theoretical frameworks. For Piaget's argument to gain support, for example, it would be necessary for children to be able to acquire the operational structures of logic and reason without having language as a means for doing so. Piaget's theory does not specify any particular form of symbolic functioning as essential to the formation of logical operational structures.

And yet it is now well established that human beings around the world acquire languages with fundamentally similar grammatical structures [Slobin, 1979). It can be assumed that all cultures exhibit sufficient language behavior for their young to acquire the particular language of the group, but language would not exist without other people (cf. Bickerton, 1981). The physical world is apparently all that is necessary for operational structures to be fi)rmed. Language requires other people, logic apparently does not.

THE PANCULTURAL REGION OF THE UNIVERSAL-TO-UNIQUE CONTINUUM

It is, therefore, necessary to make a distinction between domains which can be acquired using only universal Piagetian operational structures (e.g., logic) and domains which require the existence of a human community (e.g., language). In principle, it should be possible to construct the operational structures proposed in Piaget's theory in the absence of other human beings and in the absence of a language community. All that is required is a normal physical environment and the set of logical and mathematical experiences that will occur as the child encounters the physical world.

Yet much of what is valuable in human experience is achieved in domains that require more than operational structures for their success. We may identify a region between universal domains and cultural domains as pancultural to refer to the fact that certain domains like language are acquired in all cultures by all inlact individuals, but are not acquired by other organisms, nor would they be acquired even by human beings in the absence of a human community (Feldman, 1994). Language is the premier pancultural domain, but aspects of music, tool use, gesture, space, time, and perhaps other mediating domains may also be Ik)und in this region of the universal-to-unique continuum.

Recent work on language has led to the proposal that there are transition mechanisms specific to language, to its knowledge structures and i~Ls rules (cf. Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Keil, 1984, 1989). The structure and functioning of language is seen as sufficiently domain-specific to require special transition processes for that domain in addition to whatever general change processes might be involved (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). It has also been proposed that human beings are naturally predisposed to acquire language structures as a function of their evolutionary history (Keil, 1984).

Thus, the acquisition of language requires both domain-general as well as domain-specific transition mechanisms. 'The relative importance of the two kinds of mechanisms is not agreed upon by those who have considered the issue, but the important point for the present discussion is that domain-specific change mechanisms have been proposed to help account for large scale developmental changes in language (e.g., characteristic to defining shift, changes in ontological hierarchies). We must therefi)re add domain-specific change processes to the other kinds of change processes that we haw~ proposed (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992: Keil, 1984, 1989).


Perhaps even more important than the domain-specific transition processes such as those proposed by Keil (1984) for language are what Vygotsky called turning points, moments when two independent streams of development are brought into productive relationship with one another. The premier example of such an event is when speech and tool use become intertwined and are each irreversibly, qualitatively changed as a consequence (Fowler, 1994).

Such changes are likely to be universal within human cultures, but vary from culture to culture in the specifics of the content and process through which the turning points are brought about. A pancultural region of developmental domains would meet the specifications of Vygotsky's theory and would also help clarify differences between mechanisms producing Piaget's proposed universal logical structures and Vygotsky's specifically human achievements like speech and tool use, achievements catalyzed by human social interaction.

A pancultural region also allows for special tendencies in human cultures to help make connections between and among distinctly human streams of development such as speech, tool use, drawing and music. These are the kinds of developmental events Vygotsky placed at the center of his theoretical edifice. Vygotsky said of one such turning point: "...the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge" (emphasis in origin,'ll; Cole et al., 1978, p. 24).

With this end of the universal-to-unique continuum further differentiated into three broad regions--universal, pancultural, and cultural--it is also possible to differentiate the kinds of change processes, both internal to the child and external in the culture, that are implicated in the various kinds of transitions proposed in Vygotsky's and Piaget's theories.

It is also possible to sketch other kinds of processes and mechanisms involved at other points along the universal-to-unique continuum, and a version of such a sketch is presented in Fig. 2. Fig. 2 proposes that there are at least five different change mechanisms that account for specifically developmental changes, and that these mechanisms are differentially implicated in each of the six regions of the universal-to-unique continuum of nonuniversal theory.

To further flesh out the respective contributions to nonuniversal development of the five mechanisms specified in Fig. 2, we shall consiider in the following section the specific influence each of these mechanisms might have within a particular domain. Since so much of the empirical work on nonuniversal theory was based on analyses of children's ability to draw maps of artificial landscapes (cf. Feldman, 1980, 1994; Snyder & Feldman, 1977, 1984), map drawing is the domain that will be presented.

AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE PROPOSED ]DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGE MECHANISMS

Although researchers concerned with universals (e.g., Piaget & Inhelder, 1956) have studied children's maps, neither the ability to draw maps nor the ability to understand maps is universal. For example, in the 15th century, few people in the world could even read a map (McLuhan, 1964; Thrower, 1972), let alone produce one. Consequently, map drawing is a fitting topic of study, not only because it is a nonuniversal domain, but because our present analysis will be informed by the work of researchers concerned with the universal end of the developmental spectrum (Downs & Liben, 1993; Liben & Downs, 1989).

For the purposes of this analysis, the questJion to be addressed is as follows: when a child is asked to draw a two-dimensional map, based on a three-dimensional model and using a pencil


Maturation

Domain Specific Structures

Equilibra- tion

Instruction

Technolo- gies

Universal

0000

O 0

Pancultural

0 0 0

0 0 0 0

0 0 0

O 0

0

Cultural

O0

000

DO0

0 0 0 0

DO00

Disc ip l ine Based

O 0

D O 0

0000

0000

I d i o s y n - cratic

0

0 0 0

000

0000

0 0 0 0

Unique

0000

0 0 0 0

O 0 0 O

Minor involvement: 0 Moderate involvement: 0 0 Substantial involvement: 0 0 0 Central involvement: 0 0 0 0

Fig. 2. Mecahnisms of transition in relation to the universal-to-unique continuum.

and a piece of paper, what is the likely contribution of each of the five transition processes to the child's ability to complete this task?

Maturation Some of the highly maturationally driven capabilities that are involved in the ability

to draw a map include the following: (1) logico-mathematical abilities (Gregg & Leinhardt, 1994; Piaget, 1975); (2) spatial abilities (Piaget, 1975); and (3) symbolic representational abilities (Gardner, 1992). Less directly involved, but still necessary, abilities include language, classification, cooperation, memory, and self-regulation. These abilities are applied to map drawing from the universal and pancultural regions of the universal-to-unique continuunl.

Knowledge of these domains alone, however, is not sufficient to account for abilities to either understand or produce maps. As Beilin (I 970) :found when she attempted to correlate six Piagetian tasks with six common map reading tasks,, map-related skills cannot be explained solely by mastery of the universal abilities studied by Piaget. It is our contention that, along with other map-related skills, map drawing can only be accounted for by considering at least the other four areas described below.

Technologies For the miniature landscape task used in most of our map drawing research, three

technologies are needed: a pencil, a piece of paper, and a three-dimensional model. Obviously,


in more challenging forms of map drawing, there are other technologies that might be included in a task analysis of this kind, but they will not be considered here.

Instruction Children receive infi~rmal instruction about maps and mapping in a variety of settings,

including the following: when seeing adults refer to maps and map-related symbols on trips in cars, buses, and subways; when watching weather reports on television; and when playing games (such as football, where plays are diagrammed for the participants), as well as in video games, board games (e.g., Candyland, Clue, Monopoly), and in comic books.

In school, children receive .formal instruction about maps and mapping in the following areas: (1) the use of a pencil; (2) drawing techniques; (3) map drawing conventions; and (4) the meaning and use of specific cartographic techniques (such as how to represent a house, a tree, a body of water, as well as how and where to insert a legend, etc.). Formal instruction in school also includes guided exposure to, and examination of, maps in atlases and textbooks, as well as informal exposure to maps displayed in hallways, cafeterias, libraries, etc.

Domain-speci~c knowledge Knowledge thai is specific to map drawing includes the set of notations used to represent

various geographical features. For example, in previous research (Feldman, 1980, 1994), one characteristic of a well drawn map was the inclusion of symbols that represented the following features of the specific miniature landscape used in the research: elevation, shade trees, pine trees, bushes, bridges, roads, fences, and a parking lot. This sort of symbolization is not only essential to production of a quality map, but, more importantly for the current discussion, is unique to the domain of map making. For example, relatively well known structures of map making include representations such as legends, longitude and latitude lines, and lines of elevation; more esoteric examples of such structures are hachures, perigees, isotherms, and isobars (Harris, 1967; Thrower, 1972). The importance of these skills is that, in order to master map drawing, a person must understand how to interpret and create such domain-specific notations.

Equilibration Since equilibration emerged from Piaget's work on universals, but in the current context is

being applied to nonuniversals, it may not be surprising to find that there are some important differences between ours and Piaget 's use of this term. Accordingly, this section will be more detailed than the preceding ones, in order to delineate how the extension of this construct from the universal into the nonuniversal regions of ~the developmental continuum necessitates certain changes.

According to Piaget, equilibration is a process whereby an organism responds to a disturbance in its balance wilh the environment by coming to a newer and more adequate balance. Piaget characterized such disturbances (or perturbations) as either contradictions or lacunae (Piaget, 1975). In the current analysis we shall, for the sake of brevity, only consider the sources of lacunae--those "gaps in knowledge... [which result] when subjecls engaged in the pursuit of a goal realize that they lack one or more of the means necessary for its attainment" (Chapman, 1992, p. 52).

For example, when asked to draw a map, a child may find a gap or flaw in her work simply by examining her map and noticing that she has either: (1) left out some important elements

Developmental ch:ange 207

that should have been depicted; or (2) improperly represented a feature of the map; or even (3) inconsistently represented similar features of the model in her map. Perturbations of this kind, where the subject notices gaps on her own, have previously been characterized as internal disequilibrium (Feidman, 1980).

A second set of perturbations, those flaws that are brought to the subject's attention by someone other than the subject, have been characterized as external disequilibrium (Feldman, 1980). For example, a teacher may bring a child to see problems in her map in a number of ways: either through questioning, guided comparison with a teacher-produced model, or by an explicit statement on the part of the teacher. A peer who comments unfavourably on someone else's work might also be a possible source of external disequilibrium.

Once a child has noticed a gap ill knowledge, Piaget (1975) proposed that there are three kinds of disturbance thai equilibration can address: (1) between schemes and external objects; (2) between schemes and schemes; and (3) between schemes and total structures. In the current analysis, an example of the first kind of equilibration (between schemes and external objects) might well be triggered when a child notices that one kind of element in her map is disproportionate with another element of the same kind. For example, houses on one part of her map might be depicted as larger than (what should be similarly sized) houses on another part of the map. The second level of equilibration Ithat between schemes and schemes) might be initiated when a child realizes that her depiction of an entire set of elements (e.g., houses) is disproportionate with another set of elements (e.g., bodies of water). Finally, the third kind of equilibration (between schemes and total structures) might be triggered when the child notices that the overall map is inadequate because of problems in proportionality between any of the different sets of elements.

In completing this section on equilibration, it is important to note two important differences between the Piaget (1975) model of equilibration and the one described above. First, for Piaget, "gaps of knowledge were said to be overcome through a constructive filling-in of the gap in question" (Chapman, 1992, p. 52, emphasis added). That is, subjects invented their own response to the problem. In the current use of equilibration, however, subjects rely less on invention and more on processes better characterized as either imitation, appropriation, or modelling when overcoming lacunae. The second clifference has to do with the fact that, for Piaget, equilibration integrates three other developmental influences--maturation, physical experience, and social transmission (Piaget, 1976); by contrast, we are proposing that equilibration, as applied to nonuniversal domains of development, involves an integration of four influences--maturation, domain-specific knowledge, use of technologies, and effects of instruction.

Finally, it is critical to note that, ahhough this examination of map drawing lists examples of each developmental mechanism separately, it is not meant to imply that the boundaries between these processes and mechanisms are impermeable. On the contrary, all five sets of change processes should be seen as having reciprocal influences on each other. For example, children learn to master both necessary technologies and domain-specific structures in school via formal instruction, instruction that is often designed to coincide with the children's level of maturation. Consequently, there are multiple points of exchange and mutual influence among all of these processes. Elucidation of the nature of these interrel~ttionships is clearly desirable, but this will have to be addressed in later work


CONCLUSION

Based on the previous discussion, we have reached the conclusion that there are likely to be several different kinds of mechanism required to account for specifically developmental kinds of changes in thought. Developmental change in the context of this discussion refers to change which is large scale, relatively abrupt, irreversible, has profound implications for further development and extends from universal, age-related shifts in cognitive structures to distinctly human reorganizations and transformations of thought (Feldman, 1980, 1994).

Using the universal to framework of nonunJiversal theory as a guide, we were able to clarify some of the differences between Piaget's and Vygotsky's uses of the term development. We also added a region of developmental change called p a n c u l t u r a l between the universal and cultural domains on the universal-to-unique continuum---this is the region where we propose that language development is best placed.

As shown in Fig. 2, the same five sets of processes are involved in all of the various regions of the universal-to-unique continuum, but to differing degrees. For universal domains, maturational processes are most heavily implicated (despite Piaget 's wishes to the contrary; cf. Beitin, 1971), while instructional processes are least heavily implicated, with equilibration processes (including imitation) of intermediate importance. For cultural developmental domains, maturational processes set only broad, age-related, constraints on change, while instructional processes (in the broadest sense, including ZPD) play the most significant role. Again, equilibration processes are involved to an intermediate degree, although perhaps more than in the acquisition of universal structures.

We have provisionally extended the analysis introduced in Fig. 2 to other regions of the universal-to-unique continuum. As can be seen :in Fig. 2, each region requires a different mix of processes, as well as introducing additional sources of change, namely the existence of artifacts, technologies, and other codified and preserved representations of culturally valued achievements. As can be seen from Fig. 2, the, role of technologies and other concrete artifacts becomes more and more central as we move toward the end of the continuum of regions of developmental change, Thus, although the change mechanisms have not been discussed in detail, it can be readily seen that there is a strong possibility that, at least within nonuniversal theory, additional developmental change processes will be required to provide an adequale account of individual change in human knowledge structures.

If, as we have begun to do here, we extend the analysis still further to include changes in bodies of knowledge themselves, a topic of great interest to both Piaget (cf. Bringuier, 198(I) and Vygotsky (cf. Cole et al., 1978), then we would very likely need to add to our summary of mechanisms of developmental change. A comprehensive description of developmental change mechanisms would require at the least: the five processes indicated in Fig. 2, their degree of involvement in each region of the universal-to.-unique continuum, and their interrelationships at each point (cf. Cote, 1992). Such a description remains to be provided, but it is requisite to a comprehensive explanation of the nalure(s) of developmental change.

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Documents

The nature(s) of developmental change: Piaget, Vygotsky, and the transition process