Question 3.

In lecture and in the textbook, theories of cognitive development in childhood have

been presented as fundamentally incompatible. For example, Piaget's view of the development of
children's self-directed, or private, speech as egocentrism seems to contrast sharply with
Vygotsky's view of it as progressive internalization of thought. Similarly, Piaget’s account of
acquisition of conservation as a logico-mathematical insight seems incompatible with the
Information Processing claim that it reflects the acquisitions of reasoning strategies or specific
knowledge/experience. The Nativist claim that acquiring a “theory of mind” reflects the revision
of a theory appears fundamentally different than the Vygotskian notion that children are
cognitively socialized into talking about the mental world. Finally Cognitive Developmentalists,
Freudians, and Behaviorists disagree about whether the focus of moral development should be
moral thought, emotions, or behaviors. Focus on any one of these phenomena or any other (e.g.,
math, literacy, logic, development of self, emotions, pretense, gender identity, abstract thinking,
etc.) with apparently incompatible theoretical accounts of its development. Then argue either that
the theoretical accounts really are incompatible or that there is a way to integrate them. Be
explicit about the source of the apparent inconsistency and why they really are incompatible or
how you can reconcile them!