WHAT is the Cognitive Theory of

Personality by George Kelly

 This theory emphasize how the individual
perceives,interprets,and conceptualize events in
his environment.
• Man is viewed as a scientist who develops a
theory to predicts events.
• The comments of kelly relating to growth and
development were limited to an emphasis on
the development of preverbal constructs in
infancy and the interpretation of culture as
involving a process of learned expectation.
• According to kelly people belong to the same cultural
group by nature of the fact that they share certain ways of
interpreting events.In this way they share the same kinds
of expectations regarding certain kinds of behavior.
• the kinds of development effect one might expect to find is
found in a study of Signell(1966).He found that children
become more cognitively complex between the ages of 9
to 16.
• As children develop they tend to become more abstract in
their thinking.They also tend to have a greater number of
ways of interpreting the enviroment and to become more
flexible in their interpretation of events.
• WHAT STUDIES HAVE BEEN
REPORTED ON THE DETERMINANTS
OF COMPLEX COGNITIVE STRUCTURE
• Two studies have been reported. In one
study the subject level of cognitive
complexity was found to be related to
the degree of complexity of stimuli to
which they had been exposed in
childhood.(Sechrest & Jackson,1961).
• In another study,(Cross,1966)parents of
cognitively complex children were found to
be more likely to grand autonomy and less
likely authoritative, than parents low in
cognitive complexity.
• This suggests that the opportunity to explain
many different events and to have many
different experiences is conductive to the
development of a complex structure.
• One would also expect to find that
children who experience long
withstanding and severe threat would
develop constricted and inflexible
construct system.
• The question on factor determine the
content of constructs and complexity of
construct systems is of critical importance.
• This is relevant to the field of
education,since its is concerned with
complex flexible and adaptive construct
systems.