Professional Specialization and Formal Operations: The Balance Task

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Abstract
Piaget suggests that the emergence of formal operations during the adolescent years is tied increasingly to occupational specialization. To examine this hypothesis, the investigators administered the problem of equilibrium in a balance to 123 college male and female freshmen and seniors from four different pairs of academic majors. As predicted, science majors were more likely to demonstrate formal operations on this scientific problem than were nonscience majors. Performance was higher among seniors than among freshmen for science majors but not for nonscience majors. Results are interpreted as supporting Piaget's suggestion that performance on particular formal operational problems depends on familiarity with the problem's verbal content and on “vital interests.”