ABSTRACT
Fischer has undertaken the ambitious task of providing a unified account of both cognitive and social development. Somewhat paradoxically, perhaps, this encompassing theory proceeds from the premise that the mind is basically fragmented in nature. Cognition is conceived in terms of context-specific behavior complexes, or skills, and development as the progressive coordination of previously dissociated skills (Fischer, 1980). Starting with situation-specific sensorimotor actions, one behavior comes to be coordinated with another behavior of the same level of complexity; the resultant complex behavior, then, is coordinated with another behavior of the same level; and so on. At a certain point in development, the behaviors are dubbed representations; at a still further point, abstractions. But, within this frankly neobehaviorist framework (Fischer, 1980, pp. 481-483), cognition can never be anything more than increasingly complex situation-specific actions. The primary mechanism for the integration of behaviors in this theory is the developmental process itself in which skills become coordinated with one another to produce skills of a more advanced structural level. Mechanisms for within-level integration are relatively weak, since skills remain essentially domain—if not task—specific throughout development. Certainly, there can be no place in this account for the form of behavior to become abstracted and separated from the content, providing the basis for within-level generalization. But given the disillusionment that has recently surrounded theories that attempt to characterize cognitive development in terms of pervasive abstract structures—in particular, that of Piaget—Fischer might appear to be on safe ground in this regard. The finding of asynchronies across tasks that purportedly measure the same structure (Fischer, 1980; Flavell, 1977) has recently cast doubt on the existence of global structures.
