Table Of ContentDEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY SERIES
SERIES EDITOR
Harry Beilin
Developmental Psychology Program
City University of New York Graduate School
New York, New York
LYNN S. LIBEN. Deaf Children: Developmental Perspectives
JONAS LANGER. The Origins of Logic: Six to Twelve Months
GILBERTE PIERAUT-LE BONNIEC. The Development of Modal Reasoning:
Genesis of Necessity and Possibility Notions
TIFFANY MARTINI FIELD, SUSAN GOLDBERG, DANIEL STERN, and
ANITA MILLER SOSTEK. (Editors). High-Risk Infants and Children:
Adult and Peer Interactions
BARRY GHOLSON. The Cognitive-Developmental Basis of Human Learning:
Studies in Hypothesis Testing
ROBERT L. SELM AN. The Growth of Interpersonal Understanding:
Developmental and Clinical Analyses
RAINER Η. KLUWE and HANS SPADA. (Editors).
Developmental Models of Thinking
HARBEN BOUTOURLINE YOUNG and LUCY RAU FERGUSON.
Puberty to Manhood in Italy and America
SARAH L. FRIEDMAN and MARIAN SIGMAN. (Editors). Preterm Birth
and Psychological Development
LYNN S. LIBEN, ARTHUR H. PATTERSON, and NORA NEWCOMBE.
(Editors). Spatial Representation and Behavior Across the Life Span:
Theory and Application
W. PATRICK DICKSON. (Editor). Children's Oral Communication Skills
EUGENE S. GOLLIN. (Editor). Developmental Plasticity: Behavioral and
Biological Aspects of Variations in Development
GEORGE E. FORM AN. (Editor). Action and Thought: From Sensorimotor
Schemes to Symbolic Operations
SIDNEY STRAUSS. (Editor). U-Shaped Behavioral Growth
In Preparation
NANCY EISENBERG. (Editor). The Development of Prosocial Behavior
WILLIAM J. FRIEDMAN. (Editor). The Developmental Psychology of Time
U-SHAPED BEHAVIORAL GROWTH
Edited by
SIDNEY STRAUSS
School of Education
Tel-Aviv University
Tel-Aviv, Ramat Aviv, Israel
With
RUTH STAVY
The Israeli Science Teaching Center
School of Education
Tel-Aviv University
Tel-Aviv, Ramat Aviv, Israel
ACADEMIC PRESS
A Subsidiary of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
New York London Toronto Sydney San Francisco
COPYRIGHT © 1982, BY ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED OR
TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC
OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPY, RECORDING, OR ANY
INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT
PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER.
ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
Ill Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003
United Kingdom Edition published by
ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. (LONDON) LTD.
24/28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DX
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
U-shaped behavioral growth.
(Developmental psychology)
Includes bibliographies and index.
Contents: Introduction / Sidney Strauss — U-shaped
oehavioral growth in ratio comparisons / Ruth Stavy ...
[et al.] — U-shaped curves / D. Dean Richards and
Robert S. Siegler — [etc.]
1. Cognition in children. I. Strauss, Sidney.
II. Stavy, Ruth. III. Series. [DNLM: 1. Child behavior-
Congresses. 2. Child development—Congresses. WS 105
Uli 1979]
BF723.C5U18 155.4'13 81-17662
ISBN 0-12-673020-2 AACR2
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
82 83 84 85 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
To my dear parents
ARTHUR AND REVA STRAUSS
for their love and efforts
List of Contributors
Numbers in parentheses indicate the pages on which the authors' contributions begin.
JEANNE BAMBERGER (191), Division for Study and Research in Edu
cation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massa
chusetts 02139
MELISSA BOWERMAN (101), Department of Linguistics and Bureau of
Child Research, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045
SUSAN CAREY (169), Department of Psychology, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
GIDEON CARMI1 (11), School of Education, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv,
Ramat Aviv, Israel
WALTER EMMERICH (249), Educational Testing Service, Princeton, New
Jersey 08541
HOWARD GARDNER (147), Harvard Project Zero and Boston Veterans
Administration Hospital, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
DAVID Κ LAHR (63), Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon Uni
versity, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
JACQUES MEHLER (271), Laboratoire de Psychologie, 54 Blvd. Raspail
75270 Paris Cedex 06, France
NATHAN ORPAZ (11), School of Education, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv,
Ramat Aviv, Israel
D. DEAN RICHARDS2 (37), Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
1 Present address: Israel Science Teaching Center, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.
2 Present address: Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los
Angeles, California 90024
xi
xii LISTOF CONTRIBUTORS
DONALD A. SCHÖN (227), Department of Urban Studies and Planning,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
02139
ROBERT S. SIEGLER3 (37), Department of Education, University of Chi
cago, Chicago, Illinois 60637
RUTH STAVY (11), The Israeli Science Teaching Center, School of Edu
cation, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Ramat Aviv, Israel 69978
SIDNEY STRAUSS (1, 11), School of Education, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-
Aviv, Ramat Aviv, Israel 69978
J. G. WALLACE (87), Cognitive Psychology Research Group, Deakin
University, Geelong, V. Australia
ELLEN WINNER (147), Psychology Department, Boston College, Chestnut
Hill, Massachusetts 02167, and Harvard Project Zero, Harvard Uni
versity, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
3 Present address: Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania 15213
Preface
This volume is the product of a workshop conducted at Tel-Aviv
University under the joint auspices of that university and the Massa
chusetts Institute of Technology. The main purpose of this book is to
discuss a phenomenon that has been a puzzle for some investigators
of cognitive development; that is the fact that some behaviors appear,
disappear, then apparently reappear over time. On occasion, the early
appearing behavior seems to be well adapted to the situation in which
it is posed; if that is the case, why then would it drop out? Is this
disappearance a case of regression? Does the early behavior actually
reappear, or is the later appearing behavior only superficially similar
to the earlier behavior? These are some of the questions we explored
in the course of the workshop and discuss further in the book.
A second set of issues discussed in this volume is how different
approaches to development suggest different answers to these and
related questions. Among the contributions, there are represented struc
turalist approaches, production system models of information pro
cessing, a rule systems approach, nativism, and a model of how mat
uration factors may influence U-shaped behavioral growth. It is apparent
that the issue of whether or not U-shaped behavioral growth as a poten
tially interesting developmental phenomenon worthy of further investi
gation has its proponents and antagonists, depending upon the theory used
to describe and explain the phenomenon.
A third purpose is to present and discuss a broad range of content do
mains so that a comparison can be made of where there is and where there
is not overlap in our understanding of the developmental processes oc
curring in U-shaped behavioral growth. The domains discussed are: the
xiii
xiv PREFACE
development of physical concepts, musical concepts, metaphor produc
tion, artistic production, face perception, social cognition (gender iden
tity), and language acquisition.
The idea of a workshop at Tel-Aviv University about U-shaped behav
ioral growth grew out of a series of meetings I had with various people at the
Division for Study and Research in Education (DSRE) at the Massachu
setts Institute of Technology while there on sabbatical in 1976.1 would like
to express my appreciation to Micha Chen and Rina Shapira from Tel-Aviv
University and to Ben Snyder and Barbara Nelson from DSRE for their help
in making the workshop a reality. In addition, Richard Held of the Psy
chology Department at MIT, was instrumental in securing funds from the
Bernays Foundation at a critical moment, and I am deeply grateful for his
efforts. A year after the workshop, I was fortunate to meet Eddie Bernays,
one of the most irrepressible men I have ever known, and I wish to thank
him personally for his support.
The workshop ended with a general feeling among its participants that
we had all learned a great deal not only about our own positions but about
those of others as well. I hope this volume bears witness to that feeling.
Introduction
SIDNEY STRAUSS
Let me begin with an attempt to describe what will occupy the chap
ters to follow: U-shaped behavioral growth curves. Such a curve in
dicates the appearance of a behavior, a later dropping out of that be
havior, and what appears to be its subsequent reappearance. In one
variant of this phenomenon Phase 1 behavior is a correct performance
and Phase 2 is an incorrect performance, whereas Phase 3 behavior is
a correct performance once again. These behaviors, when graphed using
aggregated data with percentage correct performance on one axis and
age on the other, lead to a U-shaped behavioral growth curve. Calling
the phenomenon U-shaped is arbitrary since if we plotted percentage
of errors instead of percentage of correct performances we would see
an inverted U-curve instead.
I would like to reiterate at the outset that in and of itself the shape
of a curve is not particularly interesting. In fact, if we looked only at
the shape of a performance curve we would probably never get off
square one. If we are to learn something from U-shaped curves, we
will have to devise a way of thinking about what underlies each of
their three phases, what their relations might be, and what the nature
of the shift between these phases is.
Keeping the preceding comments in mind, I would like to describe
the organization of the chapters in this volume. Rather than make this
brief introduction read like a museum guide ("First you will see this
and then you will see that"), I prefer to provide some structure so that
the reader will be able to place the arguments in the various chapters
in a context. The framework has two slices that are not mutually ex
clusive: (a) representational reorganization and (b) characterizations of
ι
U-Shaped Behavioral Growth Copyright © 1982 by Academic Press, Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
ISBN: 0-12-673020-2
2 SIDNEY STRAUSS
relations between Phases 1 and 3, which, in turn, have consequences
for how one thinks about Phase 2.
Representational Reorganization
Elsewhere, Ruth Stavy and I have presented a taxonomy of expla
nations of U-shaped behavioral growth (Strauss & Stavy, in press) in
which we suggested that U-curves are a result of some kind of reor
ganization of the ways one represents one's world, be it the physical
world, language, music, etc. I will now present the taxonomy along
with a brief explanation of what the categories include.
In all, there are five categories of explanations of this phenomenon,
and these explanations center around the nature of the relations be
tween the various phases of the behaviors: Phase 1—when the behavior
appears, Phase 2—when it disappears, and Phase 3—when it apparently
reappears. Researchers working within various traditions have taken
different positions about these phases and, not surprisingly, these po
sitions are often not explicitly stated. One of the purposes of this book
is to make them more explicit.
The first type of drop in performance-recovery lasts for short periods
of time and occurs as oscillations or fluctuations when one is in tran
sition between two systems of representation. It tends to be short-term,
unstable, and specific. This shifting is characterized by a halting, un
certain kind of advance that happens when one is constructing a new
representational system and leaving the old one. The old system leads
to an incorrect solution to a problem, whereas the new one leads to
a correct solution, and the oscillation between them produces a series
of incorrect, then correct, then incorrect, etc., solutions. We shall simply
note this kind of drop in performance and will not deal with it further.
For discussions of this phenomenon see Inhelder (1968) and Strauss
(1972).
The remaining types of drops and rises in performance are the result
of the relationship between the new representational system and the
former one and not of the oscillations between representations. Here
we find changes that are long-term, stable, and general.
The second explanation of U-curves is within the organismic-devel-
opmental tradition and has been described by a research group working
under my direction at Tel-Α vi ν University. Chapter 1 in this volume
is a report on work that we have been doing in this tradition. We show
that three phases result from the application of rules from one repre
sentational system onto a second, and from their eventual disentan
glement. The first phase is an experience-based, intuitive understanding
