Development and Individual Differences
What this domain covers
Development and Individual Differences tests stage theories, social and cultural influences on learning, intelligence, and learner variability, including disabilities and giftedness. Items often ask what a child at a given stage can do or what support fits a specific learner.
Core rules
- Piaget: sensorimotor (object permanence), preoperational (symbolic thought, egocentrism, lack of conservation), concrete operational (conservation, classification, reversibility, mostly with concrete materials), formal operational (abstract, hypothetical reasoning). Development is stage-like, but ages are approximate.
- Vygotsky: learning is social; the zone of proximal development is the gap between independent performance and performance with assistance. Scaffolding is temporary support that fades; private speech becomes inner speech.
- Erikson: psychosocial crises across the lifespan, such as industry versus inferiority in the school-age years.
- Intelligence: Spearman's g; Cattell-Horn-Carroll distinguishes fluid (novel reasoning) and crystallized (acquired knowledge) abilities. IQ scores are normed with mean 100 and SD 15; they predict school achievement but do not capture all talents.
- Exceptionalities: learning disabilities are specific processing deficits not explained by low intelligence or poor instruction; ADHD involves inattention and impulsivity across settings; giftedness may include asynchronous development. RTI uses tiered instruction and progress monitoring before or instead of diagnosis.
Worked example
A 6-year-old insists that a tall narrow glass holds more water than a short wide glass, even after watching the pour. This is failure of conservation, characteristic of Piaget's preoperational stage. The reasoning: the child centers on height and ignores width, and the thinking is irreversible. The appropriate response is concrete comparison and pouring activities, not abstract lectures on volume. Do not label the child as learning disabled from this single error.
Traps
Piaget's ages are not rigid cutoffs. Vygotsky does not say instruction should wait for readiness; he says teach within the ZPD. Learning-styles matching is not supported by evidence. IQ is not the same as achievement, and a discrepancy formula alone is not required for LD identification. Culture and language can affect test performance.