Which Way Cognitive Development? An Evaluation of the Piagetian and the Domain-Specific Research Programs

The article addresses the current status of Piaget's theory as a perspective on the nature of the human intellect and its development. As a framework for discussion, we adopt Lakatos's methodology of research programs, which has been used by several authors to debate the role of Piaget's and other perspectives on cognitive development. The position we advocate is that, in recent years, research in cognitive development has undergone a profound change of perspective, in the course of which the basic ontological commitments of the Piagetian approach have been challenged and undermined. We argue that Piaget's fundamental assumptions of overarching structures and the process of equilibration have been superseded by a new perspective represented by a synthesis of domain-specific and domain-general processes, which has become the dominant impetus in the field.