The behavioural contract : a neo-Piagetian view of the collaboration between individuals and their environments, based on the form and synchrony between an EEG cognitive competence profile and cognitive performance profiles

THE BEHAVIOURAL CONTRACT:‚ÄövÑvÆ A neo-piagetian view of the collaboration between individuals and their environments based on the form and synchrony between an EEG cognitive competence profile and cognitive performance profiles. This paper adopts a competence-performance view of cognitive development (Flavell and Wohlwill 1969; Fischer 1980; Bertenthal, cited Fischer 1981; Bullock, cited Fischer 1981; Fischer and Silvern 1985) where cognitive competence reflects the structure of the individuals' minds and cognitive performance is a variable derived from a collaboration between individuals and their environments (Fischer and Bullock 1984). It is hypothesised that cognitive performance profiles reflect the cognitive competence component of the collaboration when the learning environment is manipulated to induce an individual's best performance. It is argued that EEG data suggests the location of powerful alpha wave generators located in the occipital-parietal region of the brain. Energy from these appear to be an adequate index of cognitive competence. Cross-sectional EEG data (Matousek and Petersen 1973) and other neuro-physiological data are interpreted in terms of a discontinuous function of the natural logarithm of age, which maps skill levels defined by Fischer (1980) and presents as a normative profile of cognitive development. Patterns of cognitive performances extracted from the developmental literature provide evidence of profiles of similar form and synchrony to that derived neuro-physiologically and this supports the hypothesis. Educational considerations implicit in the developmental profile suggests a view that decrements in cognitive performance can be predicted to occur throughout cognitive development. These should be considered as corresponding to periods of structural reorganization within the brain. The outcome of which is a more effective level of cognitive competence which increases that components ability to act in future collaborations with the environment, so increasing the expectation of the quality of cognitive performance outcomes. It is suggested that while SOLO levels (Biggs and Collis 1982) confound Skill Theory levels the SOLO taxonomy provides an appropriate and relatively simple technique for evaluating qualitative changes in performance. First, in establishing that a new level of competence is attained, and secondly, in observing any environmentally induced decline from optimal performance.