ABSTRACT
Cognitive psychologists generally believe that it will one day be possible to construct a formal theory not only of the normal stable functioning of the adult's cognitive apparatus, but also of the ways in which such a stable system develops. This chapter outlines a view of cognitive functioning that, although partial, has the advantage of presenting some of the known material in an orderly fashion and in such a way as to allow for the prediction of some new facts. In a paper entitled The study of competence in cognitive psychology (1968b), J. Mehler and Thomas G. Bever proposed that "cognitive theory must present an axiomatic formulation of the processes which are involved in creative behavior." Jean Piaget (1936) in particular has described some ad hoc established "plateaus" in the course of development, namely, stages corresponding to intermediary stable states.
