Model of Hierarchical Complexity - Relationship With Piaget's Theory

Relationship With Piaget's Theory

There are some commonalities between the Piagetian and Commons' notions of stage and many more things that are different. In both, one finds:

1. Higher-order actions defined in terms of lower-order actions. This forces the hierarchical nature of the relations and makes the higher-order tasks include the lower ones and requires that lower-order actions are hierarchically contained within the relative definitions of the higher-order tasks.
2. Higher-order of complexity actions organize those lower-order actions. This makes them more powerful. Lower-order actions are organized by the actions with a higher order of complexity, i.e., the more complex tasks.

What Commons et al. (1998) have added includes:

3. Higher order of complexity actions organize those lower-order actions in a non-arbitrary way.

This makes it possible for the Model's application to meet real world requirements, including the empirical and analytic. Arbitrary organization of lower order of complexity actions, possible in the Piagetian theory, despite the hierarchical definition structure, leaves the functional correlates of the interrelationships of tasks of differential complexity formulations ill-defined.

Moreover, the model is consistent with the neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development. According to these theories, progression to higher stages or levels of cognitive development is caused by increases in processing efficiency and working memory capacity. That is, higher-order stages place increasingly higher demands on these functions of information processing, so that their order of appearance reflects the information processing possibilities at successive ages (Demetriou, 1998).

The following dimensions are inherent in the application:

1. Task and performance are separated.
2. All tasks have an order of hierarchical complexity.
3. There is only one sequence of orders of hierarchical complexity.
4. Hence, there is structure of the whole for ideal tasks and actions.
5. There are transitional gaps between the orders of hierarchical complexity.
6. Stage is defined as the most hierarchically complex task solved.
7. There are discrete gaps in Rasch Scaled Stage of Performance.
8. Performance stage is different task area to task area.
9. There is no structure of the whole—horizontal decaláge—for performance. It is not inconsistency in thinking within a developmental stage. Decaláge is the normal modal state of affairs.