hard-task condition rated the task as more difficult than did those in the easy-
task condition. In contrast, ratings did not vary by condition for the gifted
children; both gifted samples tended to rate the task as difficult.
FINAL REMARKS
In this chapter, we have attempted to convey, in a manner detailed enough to
be theoretically useful, how processes of affect–motivation intertwine with
those of cognitive development. The chapter is unusual in a number of ways,
and it may be appropriate to review its basic metatheoretical claims, in order
to highlight the chapter’s overall purpose. First we have provided a novel def-
inition and explication of the construct of scheme (or schema) that shows its
functionalist character rooted in evolution. Scheme is, we believe, the missing
unit of processing needed to exhibit how performance (whether affect–emo-
tional or cognitive) is dynamically constructed–synthesized by semantic-prag-
matically organized information processes of the organism. These dynamic
syntheses of schemes are made possible by deeper general purpose mecha-
nisms (which we call hidden operators) that express in psychological terms
organismic hardware constraints that can dynamically change schemes, inte-
grate them, or both into actual performances. Central to this integration, and
to the developmental emergence of progressively more complex motivational
and cognitive schemes, are the mental attentional mechanisms that grow in
capacity with chronological age up to adolescence, and also the principle of
schemes’ overdetermination of performance. Descriptive performance is thus
deconstructed into dynamically interacting constructs for which we provided
some plausible neuroscientific interpretations.
The substantive theory based on these ideas serves as rational basis for the
method of process–task analysis (metasubjective analysis) that we use. With
these methods we formulate here qualitative models of the emergence, during
affective-and-cognitive development, of two infancy landmarks (fear of
strangers, separation anxiety) and of some key motives and specific interests
of older children. These analyses show what we take to be the mental demand
(i.e., organismic complexity) of the affective-and-cognitive, or motivational,
developmental landmarks discussed, which illustrates how affect–emotions
and cognitive processes dialectically codetermine developmental growth.
To appreciate our proposal on affective-and-cognitive developmental dia-
lectics, readers need not, however, accept our precise complexity counting. It
suffices to accept the concept of a developmentally growingM-capacity
(working memory if you will), which our method demarcates in task analysis
with the power of at least an ordinal scale (we think the underlying scale is in
fact an interval one—e.g., Pascual-Leone & Baillargeon, 1994). With these
assumptions we still make a case for our main idea: There are innate primary
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