Cognitive Development in Childhood

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the area of cognitive development from primarily theoretical and historical perspectives. Beginning with three “revolutions” in the 1950s (cognitive, language, and Piaget), the main lines of cognitive developmental theorizing and research formed and reformed during the subsequent half century. Piaget's theory dominated the field through the 1960s and 1970s, followed by efforts to deal with some of the problems of the Genevan approach (e.g., neo‐piagetians, contextualists). In recent decades, the field has become more diverse and multifaceted, and now includes theories that attempt to integrate individual differences into universal cognitive development, dynamic systems approaches to change and the emergence of novelty, evolutionary robotics frameworks, and brain imaging and other brain‐based techniques that may provide a systematic physical foundation for observed cognitive developmental changes.