Introduction to Part IV: Development and Learning

Abstract

This chapter considers the relationship between development and learning. Cognitive development may be considered to be about the general processes by which the cognitive apparatus matures, whereas conceptual development can be understood in terms of the acquisition and modification of the knowledge represented in a person’s cognitive system. However, the analysis presented earlier in the book set out how there is an intimate relationship between the apparatus of cognition and cognitive processing: that is, that the processing of new data through the existing cognitive apparatus has the potential to modify the apparatus itself. Despite this caveat, the distinction between development, as largely under genetic control, and learning, as highly contingent upon the specifics of environment, provides a useful ‘first-order’ simplification.