Archive for category cognitive development
Maintaining inter-rater agreement
Posted by Theo in Lectical Assessment System, cognitive development, measurement on April 24, 2010
How we maintain inter-rater agreement and ensure high reliability at DTS/DiscoTest
First, we design assessments with 5-7 essay questions, partly because this number is required to allow us to achieve a level of reliability that allows us to identify 4 phases per lectical level. This corresponds with a corrected alpha of .95 or greater.
Second, we engage in continuous learning. Certified analysts and trainees attend mandatory weekly scoring meetings (called scoring circles) where they discuss scoring and review challenging cases.
Third, when we begin working with data from a new subject area, the scoring circle always examines a diverse sample of protocols before starting to score in earnest. Then, when we begin scoring a new assessment, two Certified Analysts score every performance until agreement rates are consistently at or above 85% within 1/4 of a level.
Fourth, we second score a percentage of all performances, some selected at random and some selected because the first analyst lacks confidence in his or her score.
- 5%-10% of all assessments, selected at random, are second-scored by a blind analyst (a higher percentage on newer assessments or when the rate of inter-rater agreement is unacceptable.)
- A second, blind scorer is required to score an assessment any time the first scorer’s confidence level is below the level we call “confident”.
When the scores of the first and second scorers are different by more than 1 phase, first and second scorers must reconcile through discussion. If they cannot reconcile, they must consult a third Certified Analyst.
Confidence levels
4 = very confident: exemplary, prototypical
3 = confident: no guesswork, not too much variation, no more than 2 responses where scorer wavers, no lack of coherence, no language problems, adequate explanation, no suspicion of plagarism, not idiosyncratic
2 = less than confident: guesswork, too much variation, more than 2 responses where scorer wavers, lack of coherence, language problems, inadequate explanation, suspicion of plagarism, idiosyncratic
1 = not confident at all: unscorable or almost unscorable, very idiosyncratic, very incoherent
Promoting development
Posted by Theo in cognitive development, learning on October 4, 2009
There is a vast literature exploring ways to promote development. Much of this literature focuses on speeding up development, some of it focuses on optimizing development. Although both approaches are intended to support development, there is evidence that approaches focused on optimizing development are likely to do a better job. This is because development involves two intertwined processes, differentiation (broadening and deepening knowledge) and integration. In plain(er) English, you get more adequate integrations at each level if you accomplish rich differentiation at the prior level.
When we code an assessment, we pay close attention to the degree to which the test-taker elaborates each of the sub-skills it targets. In our personal feedback, we note areas of strength and areas that appear to require further growth. The basic idea is to bring all of the sub-skills up to an optimal level of elaboration to support the emergence of next-level integrations.
Most of the readings we suggest are targeted one to two phases (1/4 to 1/2 of a level) above the level of a given performance. This practice has been shown to provide the ideal level of challenge (scaffolding) for optimal growth. We also suggest activities like engaging in discourse with peers, journaling, cultivating a habit of reflection, and improving metacognitive skills, all of which provide support for growth.
We do not teach people to think at higher levels. Higher levels of performance emerge when knowledge is adequately elaborated and the environment supports higher levels of thinking and performance. We focus on helping people to think better at their current level and challenging them to elaborate their current knowledge and skills—including the not-so-sexy nuts-and-bolts knowledge required for success in any context.
Task demands and capabilities
Posted by Theo in cognitive development, decision making, leader development, leadership, measurement on September 11, 2009
Our developmental assessment system, called the Lectical Assessment System (LAS), can be used to score (a) the performances of persons and (b) the task demands of specific situations/contexts. For example, my colleagues and I have analyzed the task demands of levels of management in large organizations, and tested managers’ developmental level of performance in several skill areas—including reasoning about leadership, reflective judgment, and decision-making.
The figure above shows the relation between the task demands of 7 levels of management and the performance levels of managers occupying these management positions. In this oversimplified image, the task demands of most management positions increase in a linear fashion, spanning levels 10-13. The capabilities of managers do not, for the most part, match these task demands.
This pattern is pervasive—we see it everywhere we look—and it reflects a hard truth. None of us is capable of meeting the task demands of the most complex situations in today’s world. I’ve come to believe that in many situations our best hope for meeting these demands is to (1) work strategically on the development of our own skills and knowledge, (2) learn to work closely with others who represent a wide range of perspectives and areas of expertise, and (3) use the best tools available to scaffold our thinking.
About measurement
Posted by Theo in Lectical Assessment System, cognitive development, measurement on July 29, 2009
The story of how measurement permits scientific advance can be illustrated through any number of examples. One such example is the measurement of temperature and its effects on our understanding of the molecular structure of lead and other elemental substances.
The tale begins with an assortment of semi-mythical early scientists, who agreed in their observations that lead only melts when it is very hot—much hotter than the temperature at which ice melts, and quite a bit cooler than the temperature at which iron melts. These observations, made repeatedly, resulted in the hypothesis that lead melts at a particular temperature.
To test this theory it was necessary to develop a standard for measuring temperature. A variety of early thermometers were developed and implemented. Partly because these early temperature-measuring devices were poorly calibrated, and partly because different temperature-measuring devices employed different scales, the temperature at which lead melted seemed to vary from device to device and context to context.
Scientists divided into a number of ‘camps’. One group argued that there were multiple pathways toward melting, which explained why the melting seemed to occur at different temperatures. Another group argued that the melting of lead could not be understood apart from the context in which the melting occurs. Only when a measure of temperature had been adequately developed and widely accepted did it become possible to observe that lead consistently melts at about 327º C.
Armed with this knowledge, scientists asked what it is about lead that causes it to melt at this particular temperature. They then developed hypotheses about the factors contributing to this phenomenon, observing that changes in altitude or air pressure seemed to result in small differences in its melting temperature. So, context did seem to play a role! In order to observe these differences more accurately, the measurement of temperature was further refined. The resulting observations provided information that ultimately contributed to an understanding of lead’s and other elements’ molecular structure.
While parts of this story are fictional, it is true that the thermometer has greatly contributed to our understanding of the properties of lead. Interestingly, the thermometer, like all other measures, emerged from what were originally qualitative observations about the effects of different amounts of heat that were quantified over time. The value of the thermometer, as we all know, extends far beyond its use as a measure of the melting temperature of lead. The thermometer is a measure of temperature in general, meaning that it can be employed to measure temperature in an almost limitless range of substances and contexts. It is this generality, in the end, that makes it possible to investigate the impact of context on the melting temperature of a substance, or to compare the relative melting temperatures of a range of elemental substances. This generality (or context-independence) is one of the primary features of a good measure.
Good measurement requires (1) the identification of a unidimensional, content and context-independent trait (temperature, length, time); (2) a system for assessing the amount of the trait; (3) determinations of the reliability and validity of the assessments; and finally (4) the calibration of a measure. A good thermometer has all of the qualities of a good measure. It is a well-calibrated instrument that can be employed to accurately and reliably measure a general, unidimensional trait across a wide range of contexts.
It was this perspective on measurement that first inspired me to try to find a good general measure of the developmental dimension. To read more about how this way of thinking relates to the Lectical Assessment System (LAS), read About Measurement on the DTS site. Pay special attention to the list of things we can do with the LAS.
What is a developmental assessment?
Posted by Theo in cognitive development, educational testing, testing in general on July 29, 2009
A developmental assessment is a test of knowledge and thinking that is based on extensive research into how students come to learn specific concepts and skills over time. All good developmental assessments require test-takers to show their thinking by making written or oral arguments in support of their judgments. Developmental assessments are less concerned about “right” answers and more concerned with how students use their knowledge and thinking skills to solve problems. A good developmental assessment should be educative in the sense that taking it is a learning experience in its own right, and each score is accompanied by feedback that tells students what they are most likely to benefit from learning next.
Integrative complexity and the LAS
Posted by Theo in Lectical Assessment System, cognitive development on July 15, 2009
Suedfeld and Tetlock’s Integrative Complexity Scale is one of a number of developmental scales—most of which have been informed by Jean Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory—that subscribe to the notion of hierarchical integration. Piagetian and neo-Piagetian theorists view development as a process of differentiation (increasing knowledge) and integration (organizing knowledge). Rather than viewing learning as an additive process in which we simply accumulate bits of knowledge over time, integrative theories propose that learning is an active process through which we organize our knowledge in particular ways, depending on where we are in our development. Moving from one development level to another involves a reorganization of our knowledge that translates into a new way of thinking.
For example, when most 6-year-olds think about lying, they are likely to think about it in terms of a single consequence—keeping out of trouble, getting into trouble, or making Dad sad. An eight-year-old can think about lying in terms of multiple possible consequences—getting in trouble and keeping out of trouble, which makes it possible to decide which outcome is more likely given past experience. You can view a more detailed description of this process in an online article, The Lectical Assessment System.
Suedfeld and Tetlock’s Integrative Complexity Scoring System (ICSS), like the Lectical Assessment System (LAS) and the General Hierarchical Complexity Scoring System (HCSS) is a content-independent scoring system that can be used to score the level of integrative complexity in a wide range of texts. What differs between these scoring systems are the scoring rules. Here, I discuss the difference between the scoring rules of the LAS and the ICSS.
The LAS goes to the heart of differentiation and integration by asking analysts to examine the way arguments are explicitly structured (single elements, linear arguments, or systems) and the way the meanings of their elements are implicitly structured (single elements, linear arguments, or systems). We call this core structure. The LAS has been subjected to a number of psychometric studies and has been shown to be a valid and reliable measure of the cognitive-developmental dimension, reliably (in the statistical sense) distinguishing 20 developmental phases between age 5 and the highest levels of adulthood.
Domain-based developmental assessment systems generally target conceptual content and aspects of surface structure. The ICSS relies primarily upon indicators of surface structure. In other words, instead of directly examining core structures, the developers of this system focus on a number of indicators that point to these core structures—including things like perspective, compartmentalization, setting up “straw men”, inclusion/exclusion rules, conflict avoidance, recognizing “exceptions to the rule”, probability statements, etc. The reliability of this assessment is generally too low to justify its clinical use (i.e., to provide a score for an individual), and some forms of the assessment do not appear to meet the reliability requirements for group studies. (see Reliability 2: How high should it be?)
Testing as part of learning 2
Posted by Theo in cognitive development, learning, motivation, teaching, testing on July 14, 2009
I can’t help it, I’m a developmental psychologist. I’ve been lurking about, watching my Granddaughter, Erwin, as she learns to master her environment. She’s about 8 months old now (real age, she was three months premature, so her birth age is 11 months)
Last week, Erwin figured out that complex actions can be used intentionally to make things happen in social situations. For example, she started reaching toward her Mom and Dad to indicate her intention to be picked up. At around same time, she began pointing to objects to indicate interest or draw them to the attention of her others. And she has begun to imitate actions like waving, clapping, and head shaking. Today, when we were Skyping, she clapped her hands to get me to play pat-a-cake, and she shakes her head to get her Mom to do the same—which she finds hilarious. To Mom’s dismay, Erwin is so excited by this new way of influencing her environment that she has stopped napping.
To see an example of Erwin’s attempts at verbal communication and her new reaching behavior, double-click on the picture below. Notice how emphatic her arm extension is, and how she makes eye contact as she reaches out.
A few months ago, most of Erwin’s actions were aimed toward physical mastery—learning to obtain ojects and manipulate them in a variety of ways, learning to move herself toward things she wanted to manipulate, or playing with sound just to hear the results.
When she was learning to do physical things, the physical environment provided most of the feedback. Although her parents were there to give encouragement, we all had the sense that it was the physical feedback that she craved—getting an object to her mouth, inching toward a favorite toy, pulling herself to stand.
Now she craves feedback from her parents; she has shifted her focus from physical mastery to social mastery. She reaches for Mom and gets picked up. She shakes her head and Mom shakes her head back. She points to a banana, and Dad brings it to her. She claps her hands, and Grandma plays pat-a-cake. And every time she undertakes a new action, she is conducting a test.
Testing is part of learning.
Each time any infant tries out a new skill, she is conducting a test. Each attempt is part of an action-feedback loop. Repeated attempts to master a new skill form a series of these action-feedback loops. Each iteration is an exemplary test—in the sense that it is educative—that guides the infant incrementally toward a new level of mastery.
Interestingly, infants never tire of this kind of testing, even when the feedback is not instantly gratifying. In fact, much of the feedback is along the lines of, “almost, but not quite,” or “that didn’t work,” neither of which seem to get in the way of infant learning. For example, when Erwin first started reaching toward her parents to ask to be picked up, her action was not easy to read. It rarely got the desired response. She gradually learned that the reaching needed to be clearly directed toward the parent and accompanied by eye contact. Now the message is, “You’ve got it!” At this point, Erwin takes the skill for granted, and has shifted her attention to things she has not yet mastered, like figuring out how to get adults to do other interesting or gratifying things.
The natural action-feedback mechanism of infancy works perfectly, because the proverbial carrot is usually, due to the very nature of normal human environments, dangled at just the right distance. Good parents respond to early attempts at communication, rewarding them with interesting responses, but success isn’t the only reward; it’s always accompanied by a new “carrot”—another interesting possibility just beyond the infant’s reach. In this way, the action-feedback mechanism functions both as an aid to learning and as a motivator.
Aspects of this “carrot-and-stick” perspective on learning have been expanded and described in a variety of research traditions—e.g., as part of the notion of reinforcement feedback in social learning theory (Bandura, 1977), as zone of proximal development in Vygotsky’s (1986) work, and as part of a complex process of assimilation and accommodation in Piaget’s (1985) work. It is important, because it speaks both to how we learn and to our motivation for learning. Good feedback plays two essential roles. First, it helps the learner decide what to try next. Second, it motivates the learner to keep striving toward mastery. And, as the infant example suggests, feedback cannot be reduced to simple reward or punishment. Ideally, it is information that supports learning by being useful to the learner. Learners are not motivated by reward or punishment per se, but by an optimal combination of “not there yet” “almost” and “you’ve got it”.
DiscoTests are for learning
Most of today’s tests provide feedback in the form of rewards (good grades, advancement, or honors) or punishment (bad grades and failure). My colleagues and I don’t find this acceptable, so we’ve created a nonprofit called DiscoTest. The overarching objective of the DiscoTest Initiative is to contribute to the development of optimal learning environments by creating assessments that deliver the kind of educative feedback that learners need to learn optimally. DiscoTests determine where students are in their individual learning trajectories and provide feedback that points toward the next incremental step toward mastery.
I’ll be writing more about DiscoTest in future posts. For now, if you’d like to know more, please visit the DiscoTest web site.
A good test
Posted by Theo in cognitive development, educational testing, learning, motivation, testing in general on April 29, 2009
In this post, I explore a way of thinking about testing that would lead to the design of tests that are very different from most of the tests students take today.
Two propositions, an observation, and a third proposition:
Proposition 1. Because adults who do not enjoy learning are at a severe disadvantage in a rapidly changing world, an educational system should do everything possible to nurture children’s inborn love of learning.
Proposition 2. In K-12, the specific content of a curriculum is not as important as the development of broadly applicable skills for learning, reasoning, communicating, and participating in a civil society. (The content of the curriculum would be chosen to support the development of these skills and could—perhaps should—differ from classroom to classroom.)
Observation. Testing tends to drive instruction.
Proposition 3. Consequently, tests should evaluate relevant skills and be employed in ways that support students’ natural love of learning.
Given these propositions, here is my favorite definition of a “good test.”
A good test is part of the conversation between a “student” and a “teacher” that tells the teacher what the student is most likely to benefit from learning next.
I’ll unpack this definition and show how it relates to the proposals listed above:
Anyone who has carefully observed an infant in pursuit of knowledge will understand the conversational nature of learning. A parent holds out a shiny spoon and an infant’s arms wave wildly. Her hand makes contact with the spoon and a message is sent to her brain, “Something interesting happened!” The next day, her arm movements are a little less random. She makes contact several times, feeling the same sense of satisfaction. Her parents laugh with delight. She coos. In this way, her physical and social environment provide immediate feedback each time she succeeds (or fails). Over time, the infant uses this information to learn how to reach out and touch the spoon at will. Of course, she is not satisfied with merely touching the spoon, and, through the same kind of trial and error, supplemented with a little support from Mom and Dad, she soon learns to bring the spoon to her mouth. And the conversation goes on.
Every attempt to touch the spoon is a kind of test. Every success is an affirmation that the strategy just employed was an effective strategy, but the story does not end here. In her quest to master her environment, the infant keeps moving the bar. Once she can do so at will, touching the spoon is no longer satisfying. She moves on to the next skill—holding the spoon, and the next—bringing it to her mouth, etc. Having observed this process hundreds of times, I strongly suspect that a sense of mastery is the intrinsic reward that motivates learning, while conversation, including both social and physical interactions, acts as the fuel.
Conversation
A good educational test should have the same quality of conversation, in the form of performance and feedback, that is illustrated in the example above. In an ideal testing situation, the student shows a teacher how he or she understands new concepts and skills, then the teacher uses this information to determine what comes next.
Part of the conversation
However, a good test is part of the conversation—not the entire conversation. No single test (or kind of conversation) will do. For example, the infant reaches for the spoon because she finds it interesting, and she must be interested enough to reach out many dozens of times before she can grasp an object at will. Good parents recognize that she expresses more sustained interest if they provide her with a number of different objects—and don’t try to force her to manipulate objects when she would rather be nursing or sleeping. Each act is a test embedded in a long conversation that is further embedded in a broader context.
What comes next?
In the story, I suggest that the spoon must be both interesting and within an infant’s reach before it can become part of an ongoing conversation. In the same way, a good test should both be engaging and within a student’s reach in order to play its role in the conversation between student and teacher.
An engaging test of appropriate skills can tell us how a student understands what he or she is learning, but this knowledge, by itself, does not tell the teacher (or the student) what comes next. To find out, researchers must study how particular concepts and skills are learned over time. Only when we have done a good job describing how particular skills and concepts are learned can we predict what a student is most likely to benefit from learning next.
So, a good test must not only capture the nature of a particular student’s understanding, it must also be connected to knowledge about the pathways through which students come to understand the concepts and skills of the knowledge area it targets.
Back to conversation
I argue above, that in infancy, a sense of mastery is the intrinsic reward that motivates learning, while conversation is the fuel. If conversation is the fuel, tests that do a good job serving the conversational function I outline here are likely to fuel students’ natural pursuit of mastery and a lifelong love of learning.
Later: But what about accountability?
The SOI and the LSUA, part 1
Posted by Theo in cognitive development, research, self understanding on April 24, 2009
The Subject-Object Interview (SOI) and the Lectical™ Self-understanding Assessment (LSUA)
Before I write about the relation between Kegan’s SOI and the LSUA, I want to clarify some differences between these assessments. First, the SOI is both an interview and an assessment system. It was developed by studying the interviews of a small sample of respondents (Does anyone know how many?) who were interviewed on several occasions over the course of several years (Again, does anyone know how many or how often?). The level definitions and the scoring criteria in the SOI are tied to the subject matter of the interviews in the original sample (construction sample). For this reason, the SOI is called a domain-specific assessment. Researchers would say that the levels were defined by bootstrapping from the longitudinal data. Critiques of this kind of assessment point to bias in their level definitions (due to their small and culturally narrow construction samples), the related conflation (confusion) of particular conceptual content with developmental levels, and a weak articulation of the lowest levels, which are not based on direct empirical evidence from appropriate-aged respondents.
With respect to the LSUA, I want to clarify that it is scored with the Lectical Assessment System (LAS), a content-independent developmental scoring system that was created, in part, by identifying the dimension that underlies all longitudinally bootstrapped developmental assessment systems*. The SOI was one of the assessment systems I studied on the way to developing the LAS. Consequently, if the LAS does what it is supposed to do, it should capture the developmental dimension that underlies Kegan’s system even better than his scoring system, because the LAS is a second generation developmental scoring system that is not restrained by a content-driven scoring process (Dawson, 2002; Dawson, Xie, & Wilson, 2003: There is much written about this in our published work, available on our web site.)
What is the relation between the LSUA and the SOI?
This is a difficult question to answer, partly because there is no research that directly compares the SOI and the LSUA. However, because the LAS is a domain independent scoring system that can be used to score any text that includes judgments and justifications, I have used it to score the SOI scoring manual. The developmental sequence for SOI levels 3 to 5 corresponds well to the dimension captured by the LAS. However, Kegan’s lower levels do not match up as well, probably because his construction sample (the sample used to define his levels), as far as we can determine, did not include young children. [Kegan's original research was never published in a form that would allow us to evaluate the approach he took to defining his levels or the reliability and validity of the SOI. All we can locate are a few very small studies of inter-rater reliability, most of which are unpublished (Kegan, 2002).]
Comparisons of the SOI with other developmental assessment systems
There is some research comparing the SOI with other developmental assessment systems. In general, this research finds that the SOI and these other systems are likely to tap the same developmental dimension (see Pratt, et. al., 1991).
Ideally, we would like to conduct a direct comparison of the LAS and the scoring system Kegan developed to score the SOI, as we have done with other developmental assessment systems. (We are working with a graduate student who is planning do do this kind of comparison, and should have some results in a year or so.) In the mean time, we can point to comparisons between the LAS and several other developmental assessment systems (Kohlberg, Armon, Kitchener & King, Perry) that were developed using methods similar to those used by Kegan, and have routinely found strong correlations (above .85) between these scoring systems and the LAS, especially when they are used to score the same material (Dawson, 2000, 2001 2002a, 2004; Dawson, Xie, & Wilson, 2003 ).
Finally, some of Kegan’s level definitions are almost identical to those of Kohlberg and Selman. In fact, I would argue that they are primarily an extension of Selman’s original work on socio-moral perspective, which has informed most domain based developmental assessment systems (including all of the systems mentioned here) since it was introduced in the 1960’s (and was a great help to me when I was developing the LAS).
*The claim that there is a single developmental dimension that underlies these systems is NOT the same thing as a claim that an individual will be at the same level in different knowledge areas (or on different lines).
References
Commons, M. L., Armon, C., Richards, F. A., Schrader, D. E., Farrell, E. W., Tappan, M. B., et al. (1989). A multidomain study of adult development. In D. Sinnott, F. A. Richards & C. Armon (Eds.), Adult development, Vol. 1: Comparisons and applications of developmental models. (pp. 33-56). New York: Praeger Publishers.
Dawson, T. L. (2000). Moral reasoning and evaluative reasoning about the good life. Journal of Applied Measurement, 1(4), 372-397.
Dawson, T. L. (2001). Layers of structure: A comparison of two approaches to developmental assessment. Genetic Epistemologist, 29, 1-10.
Dawson, T. L. (2002a). A comparison of three developmental stage scoring systems. Journal of Applied Measurement, 3, 146-189.
Dawson, T. L. (2002b). New tools, new insights: Kohlberg’s moral reasoning stages revisited. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 26, 154-166.
Dawson, T. L., Xie, Y., & Wilson, M. (2003). Domain-general and domain-specific developmental assessments: Do they measure the same thing? Cognitive Development, 18, 61-78.
Dawson, T. L. (2004). Assessing intellectual development: Three approaches, one sequence. Journal of Adult Development, 11, 71-85.
Kegan, R. (2002). A guide to the subject-object interview. Unpublished Scoring manual. Harvard Graduate School of Education.
King, P. M., Kitchener, K. S., Wood, P. K., & Davison, M. L. (1989). Relationships across developmental domains: A longitudinal study of intellectual, moral, and ego development. In M. L. Commons, J. D. Sinnot, F. A. Richards & C. Armon (Eds.), Adult development. Volume 1: Comparisons and applications of developmental models (pp. 57-71). New York: Praeger.
Lambert, H. V. (1972). A comparison of Jane Loevinger’s theory of ego development and Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
Pratt, M. W., Diessner, R., Hunsberger, B., Pancer, S. M., & Savoy, K. (1991). Four pathways in the analysis of adult development and aging: Comparing analyses of reasoning about personal-life dilemmas. Psychology & Aging, 6, 666-675.
Sullivan, E. V., McCullough, G., & Stager, M. A. (1970). A developmental study of hte relationship between conceptual, ego, and moral development. Child Development, 41, 399-411.
IQ and development
Posted by Theo in cognitive development, educational testing, testing in general on April 14, 2009
IQ is a dimension of ability that has been defined using a form of statistical modeling called psychometrics. It is based entirely on psychometric analysis of results from tests consisting of many items, each of which has one correct answer.
IQ scores are arranged along a scale that is based upon the performances of hundreds of people who have taken the same test.
IQ is considered to be a relatively fixed characteristic of a person. People who score higher on an IQ test are considered to be more intelligent than people who score lower.
Cognitive development is a theoretically defined, evidence based dimension. Developmental level is determined by asking individuals to engage in activities that expose their reasoning. Items on developmental assessments are typically open-ended and do not focus on correct answers. They focus on how people go about seeking answers.
A single developmental dimension has been shown to underlie development in a wide range of cognitive domains, making it possible to define a non-arbitrary scale along which development progresses. Individual performances can be placed within a range on this scale.
Cognitive developmental level is not viewed as a fixed trait and is known to vary within persons, depending on knowledge area and a range of contextual variables. Individuals who demonstrate higher levels of cognitive development are viewed as more cognitively developed than those demonstrating lower levels of cognitive development.
The relation between IQ and cognitive development
Children with higher IQ’s learn the kind of knowledge and skills represented in IQ tests earlier than people with lower IQ’s. There is some evidence that cognitive development is likely to be more rapid (and have a higher “endpoint”) in people who have higher IQ’s.
Limitations of testing
The subject matter of IQ tests is limited, and the skill sets that are tested are narrow, so we have to be careful about making generalizations about people based on test results—especially the results of single tests. The same is true for cognitive developmental assessments. Good cognitive developmental assessments are now providing scores with a level of precision similar to that of conventional assessments, but even the most precise and accurate scores apply to performance on a single assessment in a single subject area, and do not capture the full range of capabilities of a test-taker.
The inability of any single assessment (or type of assessment) to provide an accurate account of the capabilities of an individual suggests that the best (most ethical) use of assessments involves repeated measurements across a wide range of subject areas over time.
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