Cognitive Development : The Learning Brain (Paperback)

Foreword. 1. Infancy: The Physical World 1. Memory. Perception and attention. The perceptual structure of the visual world. Cognitive neuroscience and object processing in infancy. Links between measures of early learning, memory, perception, and attention and later intelligence. Summary. 2. Infancy: The Physical World 2. Perceptual structure and conceptual analyses. Reasoning and problem solving about the physical world. Learning. What babies can't do: Cognitive neuroscience and apparent gaps in physical knowledge. Summary. 3. Infancy: The Psychological World. The central role of the actions of other agents. Goal-directed action and the attribution of mental states. Actions by infants. The understanding of false belief. Insights from social cognitive neuroscience. Summary. 4. Conceptual Development and the Biological World. Superordinate, "basic-level", and subordinate categories. The role of language in conceptual development. The biological/nonbiological distinction. The representation of categorical knowledge: A historical perspective Categories and beliefs about the world: "Essences" and naive theories. Conceptual change in childhood? Summary. 5. Language Acquisition. Phonological development. Lexical development. Grammatical development. Pragmatic development. Summary. 6. The Central Role of Causal Reasoning. Reasoning about causes and effects. Reasoning on the basis of causal principles. Causal Bayes nets. The understanding of causal chains. Scientific reasoning. Multivariable causal inferences. Biases and misconceptions in causal reasoning. Summary. 7. Social Cognition, Mental Representation and Theory of Mind. The role of language and discourse in metarepresentational development. Summary. 8. The Development of Memory. Early memory development. The development of recognition memory. The development of episodic memory. The development of eye-witness memory. The development of working memory. The development of strategies for remembering. Insights from cognitive neuroscience. Summary. 9. Metacognition, Reasoning and Executive Functions. Metamemory. Metacognition and executive function. Metacognition and reasoning. Summary. 10. Reading and Mathematical Development. Reading development. Mathematical development. Summary. 11. Theories of Cognitive Development: Piaget, Vygotsky, Connectionism and the Future. Piaget's theory. Vygotsky's theory. Cognitive neuroscience: towards a new theoretical framework. References. Index