Intelligence and experience: A neopiagetian approach

An organismic process-structural approach to the classic and modern issues of intelligence and experience is outlined. A Theory of Constructive Operators (TCO) originally designed to explicate Piaget's metatheoretical notions of stages and of equilibration is presented. The theory describes a psychological organism which is a very active semantic-pragmatic system geared to assimilatory praxis. Its organization is bilevel: a situation-bound level of subjective operators (schemes) and a situation-free level constituted either by silent operators (mental effort, learning operators, field factors, affective factors, etc.) or by basic principles which describe the dynamic articulation of subjective and silent operators (the central articulation is a principle of schematic overdetermination of performance).The presentation emphasizes the TCO's epistemological foundations and Piagetian roots. The rules governing its main constructs are given. The presentation is therefore detailed enough to make possible the theory's use and its evaluation. Some of the theory's constructs as well as the illustration of mathematical models derivable from the theory in order to make quantitative predictions in many different types of tasks are however omitted. Experimental-developmental work supporting the TCO is not presented but reference to relevant papers and unpublished dissertations is provided. Relations of the TCO to some recent information-processing models of artificial intelligence and to task analysis are explained. Five basic aspects or conceptions of intelligence are recognized: genotypic (Hebb's intelligence A), phenotypic (Hebb's intelligence B), psychometric (Vernon's intelligence C), developmental (intelligence D) and computer-simulation (i.e., CS) intelligence. All five are briefly discussed and their relations with the TCO's explication of intelligence are briefly mentioned. In this manner we tacitly suggest how the understanding of these various aspects of the complex notion of intelligence can be advanced by means of the TCO. Detailed discussion of this last issue is however beyond the scope of the paper.This paper is based on extensive unpublished material prepared by the senior author which will appear in more detail elsewhere (Pascual-Leone, in preparation). P. J. Burtis participated in the initial editing of that material and Janice Johnson assisted in the preparation of the final draft of this paper. We gratefully acknowledge their advice and effort. All rights reserved by the senior author.