Abstract
Two major approaches to understanding intellectual functioning - the psychometric and
the cognitive-developmental approaches epitomised by the seminal work of Binet and Piaget,
respectively - are here considered complementary rather than incommensurable and, in
particular, as essentially manifestations of the same underlying construct but at different levels
of scale. From this perspective, and by exploiting Item Response Theory, performances of
persons on Raven’s Progressive Matrices (exemplifying the psychometric approach) and
performances on three Piagetian tasks (the Balance, Chemical Combinations, and Correlations
tasks) are mapped onto a single continuum of intellectual development. The implication is that
qualitative and quantitative conceptions of intellectual development are closely interlinked:
within each cognitive-developmental stage, a series of small, incremental, quantitative changes
occur and evolve into a major qualitative change in cognitive......
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Approximate Word Count: 8952
Approximate Pages: 35 (260 words per double-spaced page) |