Developmentalists have overlooked the problem of the real impermanence of things. Though the metaphor of impermanence is central to Piagetian and neo-nativist accounts of representation, the development of the understanding of impermanence is unstudied. This article proposes that the development of the concept of impermanence is distinct from the…

A pretheoretical model of cognitive development is proposed which is based on the empirical establishment of Gagne's cumulative learning sequences. (Author)

Suggests some difficulties and challenges in understanding and teaching Piaget's new theory. Outlines some differences between Piaget's new and standard theories, such as the diminished status of the emergent skills that mark the onset of concrete operational thinking and the perception of achievements in concrete operations as empirical…

The influence of language and familiarity with clay upon performance of traditional tasks involving conservation of quantity and weight was examined. Children from a village in which all the women are potters did not perform differently from their peers in a neighboring village on any task. (MS)

Suggests that although Piaget's psychological theory is developmental and dialectical in a general way, the lack of a developed philosophical basis leads to the subordination of a dialectical approach to static, anti-dialectical concepts. Hegel's theory of interaction and contradiction is examined to show that dialectical theory has a precise…

Suggests that Greenberg's challenge to the centrality of object permanence in developmental thinking reveals that developmentalists' theories about childhood speak about their own self-images. Notes that developmentalists have been guilty of not only the object permanence fallacy but also the genetic fallacy, or the mistaken belief that describing…

Provides clarification of the Piagetian theory of the development of conservation and reviews the state of knowledge regarding the theory. It is concluded that reasonable evidence exists suggesting that conservation by identity precedes and induces the emergence of conservation by inversion and compensation. (Author/DB)