A Structure‐mapping Approach to Cognitive Development

Several contemporary theories of cognitive development appear to agree that children progress through a hierarchy of increasingly powerful cognitive organizations, and that higher‐level organizations impose greater information‐processing loads. Although theories differ in their method of defining both the levels and the information‐processing loads they impose, it is possible to find considerable common ground. In this paper it is argued that the different levels of cognitive organization can be attributed to a hierarchy of structure‐mapping rules. Structure mapping is part of the process by which children represent and understand concepts. Four levels of structure mapping are defined. The levels, from lowest to highest, are based on element mappings, relational mappings, system mappings and multiple‐system mappings. The higher‐level rules are more ‘abstract’ in the sense of being less dependent on specific properties of each task, and are more transferable. However, they also impose higher information‐processing demands. Children who lack the information‐processing capacity for a particular level of structure mapping will be able to attain concepts that belong to that level. The theory is used to predict the characteristic age of attainment of cognitive tasks including transitivity, classification, interpretation of algebraic expressions, analogies, logical reasoning, and hypothesis testing. It is argued that the four‐structure mapping levels can subsume the four main stages of cognitive development.