Cognitive Development

How does cognition develop in infants, children and adolescents? This handbook presents a cutting-edge overview of the field of cognitive development, spanning basic methodology, key domain-based findings and applications. Part One covers the neurobiological constraints and laws of brain development, while Part Two covers the fundamentals of cognitive development from birth to adulthood: object, number, categorization, reasoning, decision-making and socioemotional cognition. The final Part Three covers educational and school-learning domains, including numeracy, literacy, scientific reasoning skills, working memory and executive skills, metacognition, curiosity-driven active learning and more. Featuring chapters written by the world's leading scholars in experimental and developmental psychology, as well as in basic neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience, computational modelling and developmental robotics, this collection is the most comprehensive reference work to date on cognitive development of the twenty-first century. It will be a vital resource for scholars and graduate students in developmental psychology, neuroeducation and the cognitive sciences.

`At the end of the day, what is crucial is to enable educationalists to promote and apply their own metatheories and models of child development which they feel comfortable with and which enable children to develop. ... Peter Sutherland should be credited with making a significant contribution towards achieving this fundamental goal' - Educational Psychology in Practice ` ... this book deserves to become a classic in the field. Will appeal alike to academics and students in higher education, and to serving teachers- BPS: Educational Review Section This book provides a general outline of the dominant schools of thought on cognitive development, with a focus on Piaget. His views are outlined and a range of critical responses and alternatives are detailed. The author examines the application of these schools of thought to teaching pre-school, primary and secondary children. Each chapter includes a summary and questions for discussion. The book concludes with a glossary of terms.

Cognitive Development in Digital Contexts investigates the impact of screen media on key aspects of children and adolescents’ cognitive development. Highlighting how screen media impact cognitive development, the book addresses a topic often neglected amid societal concerns about pathological media use and vulnerability to media effects, such as aggression, cyber-bullying and Internet addiction. It addresses children and adolescents’ cognitive development involving their interactions with parents, early language development, imaginary play, attention, memory, and executive control, literacy and academic performance. Covers the impact of digital from both theoretical and practical perspectives Investigates effects of digital media on attention, memory, language and executive functioning Examines video games, texting, and virtual reality as contexts for learning Explores parent-child interactions around media Considers the development of effective educational media Addresses media literacy and critical thinking about media Considers social policy for increasing access to high quality education media and the Internet Provides guidance for parents on navigating children’s technology usage

In Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development, Frank C. Keil provides a coherent account of how concepts and word meanings develop in children, adding to our understanding of the representational nature of concepts and word meanings at all ages. Keil argues that it is impossible to adequately understand the nature of conceptual representation without also considering the issue of learning. Weaving together issues in cognitive development, philosophy, and cognitive psychology, he reconciles numerous theories, backed by empirical evidence from nominal kinds studies, natural-kinds studies, and studies of fundamental categorical distinctions. He shows that all this evidence, when put together, leads to a better understanding of semantic and conceptual development. The book opens with an analysis of the problems of modeling qualitative changes in conceptual development, investigating how concepts of natural kinds, nominal kinds, and artifacts evolve. The studies on nominal kinds document a powerful and unambiguous developmental pattern indicating a shift from a reliance on global tabulations of characteristic features to what appears to be a small set of defining ones. The studies on natural kinds document an analogous shift toward a core theory instead of simple definition. Both sets of studies are strongly supported by cross cultural data. While these patterns seem to suggest that the young child organizes concepts according to characteristic features, Keil argues that there is a framework of conceptual categories and causal beliefs that enables even very young children to understand kinds at a deeper, theoretically guided, level. This account suggests a new way of understanding qualitative change and carries strong implications for how concepts are represented at any point in development. A Bradford Book

Originally published in 1976, the authors present a theory of cognitive development based upon an information-processing approach. This approach leads to the presentation of precise models of performance on a number of tasks derived from a set of critical quantitative concepts: elementary quantification, number concepts, conservation and transitivity. These models encompass both early and late developmental stages, and a process model of the developmental mechanism itself is outlined. Here is one of the first attempts to apply the information-processing view of cognitive psychology to developmental issues raised by empirical work in the Piagetian tradition. It includes an extensive analysis of the processing demands of several of the classic tasks and describes the development of a system capable of performing a wide range of other tasks, including the ability to be self-modifying. It provides an introduction to general concepts and detailed properties of cognitive models stated as production systems. It will be most valuable for students in cognitive development and related courses in developmental, cognitive, and educational psychology, as well as computer science.

Tying together almost four decades of neo-Piagetian research, Cognitive Development provides a unique critical analysis and a comparison of concepts across neo-Piagetian theories. Like Piaget, neo-Piagetian theorists take a constructivist approach to cognitive development, are broad in scope, and assume that cognitive development is divided into stages with qualitative differences. Unlike Piaget, however, they define the increasing complexity of the stages in accordance with the child’s information processing system, rather than in terms of logical properties. This volume illustrates these characteristics and evidences the exciting possibilities for neo-Piagetian research to build connections both with other theoretical approaches such as dynamic systems and with other fields such as brain science. The opening chapter provides a historical orientation, including a critical distinction between the "logical" and the "dialectical" Piaget. In subsequent chapters the major theories and experimental findings are reviewed, including Pascual-Leone's Theory of Constructive Operators, Halford's structuralist theory, Fischer's dynamic systems approach to skills, Case's theory of Central Conceptual Structures, Siegler’s microgenetic approach, and the proposals of Mounoud and Karmiloff-Smith, as well as the work of others, including Demetriou and de Ribaupierre. The interrelation of emotional and cognitive development is discussed extensively, as is relevant non neo-Piagetian research on information processing. The application of neo-Piagetian research to a variety of topics including children's problem solving, psychometrics, and education is highlighted. The book concludes with the authors' views on possibilities for an integrated neo-Piagetian approach to cognitive development.

Cognition and emotions in children.

This integrative text spotlights what educators need to know about children's cognitive development across grade levels (PreK-12) and content areas. The book provides a concise introduction to developmental neuroscience and theories of learning. Chapters on general cognitive abilities probe such crucial questions as what children are capable of remembering at different ages, what explains differences in effort and persistence, and how intelligence and aptitudes relate to learning. Domain-specific chapters focus on the development of key academic skills in reading, writing, math, science, and history. Multiple influences on academic achievement and motivation are explored, including school, family, cultural, and socioeconomic factors. Each chapter concludes with clear implications for curriculum and instruction.

A new understanding of cognitive development from the perspective of neuroscience This book provides a state-of-the-art understanding of the neural bases of cognitive development. Although the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience is still in its infancy, the authors effectively demonstrate that our understanding of cognitive development is and will be vastly improved as the mechanisms underlying development are elucidated. The authors begin by establishing the value of considering neuroscience in order to understand child development and then provide an overview of brain development. They include a critical discussion of experience-dependent changes in the brain. The authors explore whether the mechanisms underlying developmental plasticity differ from those underlying adult plasticity, and more fundamentally, what distinguishes plasticity from development. Having armed the reader with key neuroscience basics, the book begins its examination of the neural bases of cognitive development by examining the methods employed by professionals in developmental cognitive neuroscience. Following a brief historical overview, the authors discuss behavioral, anatomic, metabolic, and electrophysiological methods. Finally, the book explores specific content areas, focusing on those areas where there is a significant body of knowledge on the neural underpinnings of cognitive development, including: * Declarative and non-declarative memory and learning * Spatial cognition * Object recognition * Social cognition * Speech and language development * Attention development For cognitive and developmental psychologists, as well as students in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive development, the authors' view of behavioral development from the perspective of neuroscience sheds new light on the mechanisms that underlie how the brain functions and how a child learns and behaves.