Linking Psychometric And Cognitive-Developmental
...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 functioning. In order to clarify the
nature of the transformations in thinking that occur at the transition points between one
Piagetian stage and another a new taxonomy is developed to classify RPM items. Knowledge of
the RPM items which are operational at each Piagetian transition indicates the transformations in
thinking that are required.
WPE Linking psychometric and cognitive-developmental 2
Linking Psychometric and Cognitive-Developmental Frameworks for Thinking About
Intellectual Functioning
September 16, 2006
This paper is divided into two Parts. Part I describes the data base for both studies and
outlines the way in which both the difficulty of Raven Progressive Matrices (RPM) items and
developmental levels in thinking as revealed by interviews carried out using three Piagetian tasks
were mapped onto a common continuum … and the conclusions to be drawn from the
demonstration that it is, indeed, possible to do so. Part II develops a new taxonomy for
classifying RPM...
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