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Article
Cognitive-Developmental and Behavior-Analytic Theories: Evolving into Complementarity
Human Development (2006)
  • Willis F. Overton
  • Michelle D. Ennis
Abstract
Historically, cognitive-developmental and behavior-analytic approaches to the study of human behavior change and development have been presented as incompatible alternative theoretical and methodological perspectives. This presumed incompatibility has been understood as arising from divergent sets of metatheoretical assumptions that take the form of ontological and epistemological principles, and constitute worldviews. Classically, cognitive-developmental approaches have been cast as deriving from an organismic worldview and behavior-analytic approaches from a contextualist worldview. Previous attempts at uniting the two approaches have entailed privileging one and radically modifying the other. The present paper argues that a meaningful integration requires a set of metatheoretical assumptions that transcends both worldviews, and, while maintaining their distinct qualities, unites them. This metatheoretical framework termed relational metatheory is described and its integrative implications explained. 
Keywords
  • Action theory,
  • Behavior analysis,
  • Cognitive development,
  • Metatheory,
  • Worldviews
Publication Date
May, 2006
DOI
10.1159/000091893
Citation Information
Willis F. Overton and Michelle D. Ennis. "Cognitive-Developmental and Behavior-Analytic Theories: Evolving into Complementarity" Human Development Vol. 49 Iss. 3 (2006) p. 143 - 172 ISSN: 0018-716X
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/michelle-soreth/3/