in applying this same line of logic to explaning children’s intellectual development, psychologists face two tasks:(1) devising a series of computer program so that each program accurately simulates children’s thinking processes at a particular stage of mental growth and (2) explaining the means by which the program at one stage can be transformed into next program in the series. So far, theorists designing computer program to represent children’s thinking processes have been more successful with the first of these tasks than with the second. For example, early in the game, D.Klahr and J.G. Wallance (1976) prepared what they judged to be satisfactory computer simulations of Piagetian preoperational and concrete-operations substages for the task areas of areas of class inclusion, conservation, and transitivity. However, the two investigators admitted to being far less successful in fashioning an adequate explanation of how a child makes the transition from preoperational to concrete-operations thinking. They decided that more experimentation was needed.
With this overview of classical information-processing models as foundation, we next consider revision of information-processing theory that are intended to solve problem encountered with the classical version.