ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, there has been a surge of interest in domain-specific competence and
“modularity of mind.” In oversimplified terms, is human cognition largely general,
flexible, and homogeneous, or does it consist of modules that may be highly specific,
possibly “hard-wired” (innate), and independent in the sense of not interacting much with
each other? A Piaget-relevant example is whether one views conservation an indicator
and component of a global shift in human logic (homogeneous, domain general), or just
“learning a little physics” (domain specific). One of the attractive features of modularity
is that it might help solve the learning problem-how do people miraculously learn the
things they evidently do? Modularity helps with the learning problem particularly if some
(modular) competence is present at birth. Another general attractiveness of modularity
and domain specificity is that these help deal with empirical complexities that always
seem to arise in homogeneous views of human development-phenomena such as
horizontal décalage, where stage characteristics do not appear across all domains at the
same time. Similarly, assumptions about independent competencies have been proposed
to help explain apparent complexities in what might otherwise be viewed as global
capacities, such as intelligence (Gardner, 1993). Modularity may also explain why
learning some things is hard-if those things contradict the relevant congenital module. A
good reference on domain specificity and modularity is Hirschfeld and Gelman (1994).
