Equilibration and cognition: a review and elaboration of Piaget's genetic epistemology

Piaget's concept of equilibration--and its current status--has been briefly reviewed. Two fundamental and essentially related issues were identified: the question of conformity between cognitive structures and their referent external reality and, from a cognitive viewpoint, the description of a "growing self-regulatory adaptive system." These issues were reconsidered in relation to, and elaborated on the basis of, relevant ideas mainly from philosophy, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence. A model of a cognitive homeostatic system was developed from an innate subsystem to a learning-based control hierarchy that additionally involves a naturomorphic cognitive subsystem and an abstract cognitive subsystem. The process of equilibration of cognitive structures was approached in terms of the information processing characteristics of these two cognitive subsystems and their inherent sources of error, and the theoretical requirements for ensuring conformity between cognitive structures and their external referents have been indicated. The model, which takes into account these requirements, constitutes a systematic description of a learning based "growing self-regulating adaptive system."