ABSTRACT
This chapter is an attempt to provide a new theoretical account of intellectual development from birth to adulthood. It is divided into three sections. In the first section, I examine recurrent patterns of intellectual development. Following Piaget (e.g., 1970), each of three stages of development is considered separately: the sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years), the preoperational stage (2 to 6 years), and the concrete operational stage (6 to 12 years). Following Simon (1962), the sequence of substages within each stage is characterized as a progression of increasingly complex and powerful executive strategies. Following Pascual—Leone (1969), two factors are suggested as being responsible for these progressions: experience with the strategy in question and an increase in the size of working memory. In the second section, I discuss long-term cognitive changes underlying the recurrent pattern of development. My hypothesis is that an increase in the automaticity of basic operations accounts for the increase in working memory within each stage. I also suggest that a certain minimum level of operational automaticity at one stage is prerequisite for transition to the next stage. Finally, in the third section, I predict the sequence of intellectual developments in adolescence and adulthood on the basis of the pattern and mechanism of development hypothesized to characterize the first three stages of life.
