ABSTRACT
As one examines the pattern of performance across the various tasks that have been reported in the foregoing chapters, and particularly as one begins to model the conceptual representations that underpin children’s performance on them, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe that several different strands of development are involved. Rather, it seems more likely that there is one strand of development involved, which happens to be of relevance to four or five different domains of endeavor. Stated in more classic terms: It seems far more likely that children are assimilating each of the various tasks with which they are presented into one underlying central conceptual structure, than that they are representing each new problem, afresh, in a fashion that happens to be very similar.
