Psychological Review - Harvard Graduate School of Education ...

496 KURT W. FISCHER
various of his own characteristics to various
aspects of the career that he is considering.
At LevelS, abstract mappings, the person
can relate one abstract identity concept with
another. For example, he can coarsely
relate his own career identity with his conception
of his potential spouse's career
identity: Perhaps he sees his own career
identity as requiring that his spouse be in a
closely related career or perhaps as requiring
that his spouse be primarily a homemaker.
Level 9 abstract systems produce a much
more flexible, differentiated relation between
two identity concepts. For instance,
the person can relate two aspects of his
own and his spouse's identity, such as
career and parental identities, and thus consider
in a more differentiated way what his
own identity requires of his spouse's
identity and what his spouse's identity
requires of his own identity.
Finally, at Level 10, systems of abstract
systems, this person can coordinate two or
more abstract identity systems. He might
relate his own and his spouse's career and
parental identities now (one Level 9 system)
with their career and parental identities
10 years ago when they were first married
(a second Level 9 system). The result is a
higher-level conception of what their joint
career and parental identities have been like
during their marriage.
Although I know of no rigorous tests of
this or any other developmental sequences
in abstract skills during adolescence and
adulthood, several investigators have reported
data that generally support the predictions
of development from Levels 7 to 10.
Some of the most detailed findings involve
developments in the history of science. Both
Miller (Note 5) and Gruber (1973; Gruber &
Barrett, 1974) have described developments
of scientific theory that seemed to them to
roughly follow Piaget's description of cognitive
development from the pre-operational
period to the formal operational period.
Miller illustrates this parallel for the development
of quantum mechanics, and
Gruber for the development of Darwin's
theory of evolution. If these scientific
theories were developing through Levels 7
to 10, their progression would resemble the
progression from pre-operational to formal
operational thought, according to skill
theory, because both the Piagetian periods
and the scientific progressions involve
development within a tier from Levels I
to IV. 8 Oddly, Piaget too (1970; Piaget in
Beth & Piaget, 1961/1966) has suggested
that there may be general parallels between
the development of scientific theories and
the development of cognition in the child.
I say "oddly" because his position on
formal operations seems to preclude such
parallels.
Within Piaget's framework, cognitive development
virtually ends with formal operations:
Adolescents entering the formal
operational period have achieved fully
logical thinking, and there is little more for
them to do, except perhaps to extend their
logical thinking to new content areas (Piaget,
1972). Many people have been dissatisfied
with this conception of formal operations
(e.g., Arlin, 1975; Gruber & Voneche, 1976;
Riegel, 1975; Wason, 1977), but there has
been no alternative position for analyzing
development beyond early adolescence.
Consequently, major age differences in the
acquisition of various of Piaget's formal
operational tasks have been interpreted primarily
as resulting from performance
factors, not from developmental changes
(Inhelder & Piaget, 1955/1958; Martarano,
1977; Neimark, 1975). According to skill
theory, many of these age differences may
well arise because the tasks require v different
levels of abstraction.
Piagetian scientific tasks and the rarefied
atmosphere of theory construction are not
the only places that skills should develop
through Levels 7 to 10. Most adults probably
master at least a few skills beyond
Level 7, like the hypothesized identity concepts.
Other skills that probably belong to
Levels 7 to 10 include moral judgment, the
managerial skills of the director of a corporation
or a school system, the skills required
to write an effective essay or novel, and the
skills involved in programming and operat-
8 Within the present theory, Piaget's pre-operational,
concrete operational, and formal operational periods
are explained by Levels 4 to 7.