Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Microgenetic Analysis

Microgenetic analysis is the study of processes of cognitive development as they occur, with the goal of discovering underlying mechanisms to account for children’s or adults’ developing competencies. For example, researchers may be interested in how children devise new and more efficient problem-solving strategies or why adults might do so more efficiently than children. They may seek to understand very specific acquisitions (e.g., how children learn to add efficiently) or more global ones (e.g., how attention skills develop). This entry distinguishes microgenetic analysis from other methods, describes the history of microgenetic analysis and its use in studying human development across the life span, and explores contemporary applications of microgenetic analysis as well as the implications of findings obtained using this method.

Microgenetic Analysis Compared to Other Methods

Prior to the development of the microgenetic method, researchers were confined to studying cognitive development in ways that had significant limitations: A researcher might compare behaviors displayed by children in two age groups and then postulate what may have caused any observed differences. The researcher might measure and compare the behavior of an individual (or group of individuals) at widely spaced times and infer a possible cause (a cross-sectional design). Or, in a longitudinal design, the researcher could introduce an intervention between 2 times to determine whether a hypothesized cause (i.e., the intervention) is followed by an expected change in participants’ knowledge or behavior. None of these methods, however, provides the opportunity to observe actual change in the moment, as it occurs, and any conclusions regarding what, exactly, developed between observations require a great deal of inference by the researcher.

Microgenetic research aims to detect change more directly by assessing behavior at much more frequent intervals, with observations narrowly spaced and timed to coincide with the expected period of development. Such a design has the potential to capture moments of strategy discovery or knowledge acquisition, among moments and behaviors directly prior or afterward. By observing these moments, the researcher can glean valuable information about the participant’s state of mind just prior to and right when the change occurs. The researcher can also follow the participant’s behavior afterward to see whether new behaviors solidify or undergo further change. The unique nature of microgenetic research allows for effective study of human development across the life span.

History

The 20th-century developmentalist Lev Vygotsky was an early proponent of the systematic observation of learning during the periods of change, as was Heinz Werner, another developmentalist of that time. Although a case can be made that the microgenetic method makes intuitive sense, its use did not become common until the early 1980s. Prior to that time, more traditional cross-sectional methods were well suited to most developmentalists’ focus on simply describing the phases of children’s development. That focus was associated in part with the influence of constructivist Jean Piaget whose stage theory held that children construct their own cognitive development through their interaction with the environment. However, his methods of investigation did not allow his followers to go beyond describing what children think and know at specific periods of their development. Although Piaget’s work helped to shed light on what children could do or think at certain stages, it could not explain how children constructed their development—how they reached each discrete stage by progressing from ignorance to understanding. Nor could stage theory account for why older children seem to acquire certain skills at a faster rate than younger ones, or why learners of any age could learn a skill but fail to apply it when given a similar task. To do this, researchers needed to devise a method to observe learning itself.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution