How do children learn and how are new modes of thought developed? These questions have for years been of paramount interest to psychologists and others concerned with the cognitive development of the child. In this major work, originally published in 1974 and reporting on over ten years’ research of the Geneva School, the authors carried the pioneering investigations of Jean Piaget to a new and remarkable level. As Piaget said in his foreword to the book: ‘The novelty of the findings, the clarity of the theoretical interpretation, and the sometimes even excessive caution of the conclusions enable the reader to separate clearly the experimental results from the authors’ theoretical tenets.’ The authors’ learning experiments with children were designed to examine the processes that lead to the acquisition of certain key concepts, such as conservation of matter and length. Detailed study of the progress of each individual subject revealed a number of features characteristic of situations that create conflicts in the child’s mind and certain regularities in the way these conflicts are resolved. Such data threw new light on the dynamics of the development of cognitive structures as well as on basic mechanisms of learning at the time.

How do children learn and how are new modes of thought developed? These questions have for years been of paramount interest to psychologists and others concerned with the cognitive development of the child. In this major work, originally published in 1974 and reporting on over ten years’ research of the Geneva School, the authors carried the pioneering investigations of Jean Piaget to a new and remarkable level. As Piaget said in his foreword to the book: ‘The novelty of the findings, the clarity of the theoretical interpretation, and the sometimes even excessive caution of the conclusions enable the reader to separate clearly the experimental results from the authors’ theoretical tenets.’ The authors’ learning experiments with children were designed to examine the processes that lead to the acquisition of certain key concepts, such as conservation of matter and length. Detailed study of the progress of each individual subject revealed a number of features characteristic of situations that create conflicts in the child’s mind and certain regularities in the way these conflicts are resolved. Such data threw new light on the dynamics of the development of cognitive structures as well as on basic mechanisms of learning at the time.

Originally published in 1976, the authors present a theory of cognitive development based upon an information-processing approach. 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.

Until the 70s and 80s anthropologists studying different cultures had mainly confined themselves to the behaviour and idea systems of adults. Psychologists, on the other hand, working mainly in Europe and America, had studied child development in their own settings and simply assumed the universality of their findings. Thus both disciplines had largely ignored a crucial problem area: the way in which children from birth onwards learn to become competent members of their culture. This process, which has been called 'the quintessential human adaptation', constitutes the theme of this volume, originally published in 1988. It derives from a workshop held at the London School of Economics which brought together fieldworkers who in their studies had paid more than usual attention to children in their cultures. Their experience and foci of interest were varied but this very diversity serves to illuminate different facets of the acquisition of culture by children, ranging in age from pre-verbal infants to adolescents. Evolutionarily primed for culture-learning, children are responsive to a rich web of influences from subtle and indirect as in their music and dance to direct teaching in the family guided by culture-specific ideas about child psychology. Some of the salient things they learn relate to gender, status and power, critical for the functioning of all societies. The introductory essay provides the necessary historical background of the development of child study in both anthropology and psychology and outlined how future research in the ethnography of childhood should proceed. The book concludes with an annotated bibliography providing a guide to the literature from 1970 onwards.

The contributors bring their different orientations to the study of child development and genetic epistemology to show the continuing value of Piaget's theory and its fruitfulness in providing insights which permit the advancement of science.

Are humans unique in having self-reflective consciousness? Or can precursors to this central form of human consciousness be found in non-human species? The Missing Link in Cognition brings together a diverse group of researchers who have been investigating this question from a variety of perspectives, including the extent to which non-human primates, and, indeed, young children, have consciousness, a sense of self, thought process, metacognitions, and representations. Some of the participants--Kitcher, Higgins, Nelson, and Tulving--argue that these types of cognitive abilities are uniquely human, whereas others--Call, Hampton, Kinsbourne, Menzel, Metcalfe, Schwartz, Smith, and Terrace--are convinced that at least the precursors to self-reflective consciousness exist in non-human primates. Their debate focuses primarily on the underpinnings of consciousness. Some of the participants believe that consciousness depends on representational thought and on the mental manipulation of such representations. Is representational thought enough to ensure consciousness, or does one need more? If one needs more, exactly what is needed? Is reflection upon the representations, that is, metacognition, the link? Does a realization of the contingencies, that is, "knowing that," in Gilbert Ryle's terminology, ensure that a person or an animal is conscious? Is true episodic memory needed for consciousness, and if so, do any animals have it? Is it possible to have episodic memory or, indeed, any self-reflective processing, without language? Other participants believe that consciousness is inextricably intertwined with a sense of self or self-awareness. From where does this sense of self or self-awareness arise? Some of the participants believe that it develops only through the use of language and the narrative form. If it does develop in this way, what about claims of a sense of self or self-awareness in non-human animals? Others believe that the autobiographical record implied by episodic memory is fundamental. To what extent must non-human animals have the linguistic, metacognitive, and/or representational abilities to develop a sense of self or self-awareness? These and other related concerns are crucial in this volume's lively debate over the nature of the missing cognitive link, and whether gorillas, chimps, or other species might be more like humans than many have supposed.

Cognitive Development of Children and Youth: A Longitudinal Study presents a theory of cognitive development, including descriptive information and conclusions based on a longitudinal study. This book discusses the mental operations in concept learning, results pertaining to comparisons between control groups and longitudinal blocks, and operations involving meaningful reception learning at the formal level. The conditions of learning and memory requirements, linguistic-relativity hypothesis, invariant sequencing, and rate and form of cognitive development across the school years are also elaborated. This text likewise covers the conditions contributing to rapid and slow cognitive development, longitudinal intervention study, and differences among concepts in age of attainment. This publication is intended for individuals who are interested in the cognitive development of children and youth, as well as upper-division and graduate students in psychology, educational psychology, and education.