Epistemología y psicología genética: una habitación sin vistas

Christiane Gillitron's paper L'émergence d'un constructivisme psychologique: Epistémologie génétique et étude du développement is a remarkable review and synthesis of the general epistemological framework and basic concepts of genetic psychology. In the context of this special issue, the author highlights the intrinsic logic of this approach and places this theoretical framework outside of the debate on the different kinds of constructivism. The current viewpoints on cognitive development oblige us to consider two specific features of Piaget's construction: the search of common cognitive structures and general fonctional mechanisms in all human beings; and the specific kind of content these structures work on. Both features clearly diverge from those emphasized by current works in this field. This is particulary clear in the case of the aspects concerning the diversity of mechanisms, processes and structures involved in our cognitive abilities, depending on the different cultural contexts of development and on specific domains or contents these processes and structures are related with. The difficulty in integrating the question of diversity is seen as one of the greatest limitations of genetic psychology when considered as a global model of cognitive development.