Piagetian cognitive development and primary process thinking in children

On the hypothesis that, as children develop from the preoperational to the concrete level of operations, there would be a corresponding increase in the effective control of primary process ideation, 37 white, middle-class children, from 5 to 8 years old, were individually tested on eight Piagetian tasks and the Rorschach test. Piagetian Development was significantly correlated with Holt's Primary Process Manual measures of (a) Form Level, (b) Defense Effectiveness, (c) Adaptive Regression, (d) Primary Process Level 2, (e) Content Level 2, (f) Control/Defense Plus, and (g) Control/Defense Total. An analysis of variance demonstrated significant primary process differences between preoperational, transitional and concrete operational groups. Correlations between the eight Piaget tasks and the constructed mean Piaget score ranged from .65 to .91. The negative findings of other researchers, which contrast with the positive results in this study, may be explained by the narrower age ranges of their samples.