Everyday Thinking and Piagetian Operativity in Adults

Abstract

Everyday, familiar materials and formal materials were used to test the Piagetian classification and formal operational abilities of highly educated adults of both sexes. 30 subjects were in their 30s, and 30 were of retirement age. These adult subjects did not show mastery of the tasks, and the materials used influenced scores. Results were discussed from the point of view of a new model of adult lifespan development related to formal operational activities in adults and related to the experience-structure dialectic in mature adult thought.

On Missing Links and Such: Interfaces between Cognitive Research and Everyday Problem-Solving

“…Earlier work on con crete and formal operations found deficits in the performances of older adults. Hence, the issue of competence versus performance arose [see Overton and Newman, 1981, for a discussion], and the issue of the ecological validity of such tasks was raised [LabouvieVief 1977;Sinnott, 1975]. Initial efforts to make such tasks more ecologically valid and thus more reflective of everyday problem solving took the form of substituting familiar task materials for traditional materials, re sulting in varying degrees of success [LaRue, 1979;Newman et al, 1983;Sinnott, 1975].…”

“…Hence, the issue of competence versus performance arose [see Overton and Newman, 1981, for a discussion], and the issue of the ecological validity of such tasks was raised [LabouvieVief 1977;Sinnott, 1975]. Initial efforts to make such tasks more ecologically valid and thus more reflective of everyday problem solving took the form of substituting familiar task materials for traditional materials, re sulting in varying degrees of success [LaRue, 1979;Newman et al, 1983;Sinnott, 1975]. These discrepant findings have led re searchers to question the assumption that such tasks were ecologically valid, because the studies did not take into consideration the skills that would be adaptive for commu nity-dwelling older adults [Kramer, 1981;Newman ex al., 1983;Quay huge n et al.…”

Cognitive-Structural Diagnosis: A Spiral Course of Advancement

“…With this method a subject's understanding of, for example, class inclusion or weight con servation alone would mark her or his rea soning as concrete operational. Schemes that are commonly used to identify formal-opera tional reasoning include isolation of variables strategy, volume conservation, the scheme for producing 'all combinations', and the scheme of proportionality [see, for example, Kuhn and Capon, 1979;Sinnott, 1975],…”

Current Status of Formal Operations Research

“…A relatively obvious variable for consideration is task content; presumably familiar material should be more conducive to formal operations than is arbitrary, abstract, or symbolic material. Although this reason ing has been supported for the infamous 4-card problem of Wason (Wason and Johnson-Laird, 1972) it has led to ambiguous results in its formal operations applications (Sinnott, 1975;Kuhn and Brannock, 1977). Manipulation of task instructions, on the other hand, has led to a number of interesting findings.…”