Understanding Cognitive Development

Maggie McGonigle-Chalmers, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781412928816, 9781412928809
• eBook ISBN: 9781473918153
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Understanding Cognitive Development provides a fresh, evidence-based research perspective on the story of children's cognitive development in the first ten years of human life.

Starting with a brief survey of the key theoretical positions that have come to define developmental psychology, the textbook then focuses on the different cognitive abilities as they emerge throughout early development. Uniquely, it examines these in terms of their interdependence; that is how skills such as perception, memory, language and reasoning relate to one another. This holistic treatment allows students to see the many important intersections in this critical phase of human life development.

This textbook employs a novel design that will be of immense help to both students and instructors and is intended to be read at two levels: at the first level, it provides a fully referenced explanatory account of experimental research on cognitive development with complete attention to the needs of students who have never been exposed to experimental methodology nor studies in cognitive development before.

At the second level, and mapped directly onto numbered sub-sections within the text, the author uses illustrative panels designed along the lines of PowerPoint presentations to summarise studies and key findings, employing lots of pictorial material together with bullet-points to give vividness and texture to the material covered. These panels are replicated on the accompanying companion website in PowerPoint for lecturers and students to make further use of in teaching and revision.  Revision points are provided at the end of every chapter.

Rich in academic coverage, including a widespread database of the most important empirical research in the field, this textbook will be essential reading for students of cognitive development and developmental psychology across psychology and education.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• About the Author
• Preface: How to Read this Book
• Acknowledgements
• Images from Shutterstock, Inc.
• Index of Video Clips
• Chapter 1 Introduction: Studying How the Mind Grows
• Chapter 2 Sensory development and Visual Perception During Early Infancy
• Chapter 3 Perceptual Development During the First Year: The Multisensory Infant
• Chapter 4 Sensorimotor Development in Infancy: Gaining Control in A Physical Environment
• Chapter 5 Sensorimotor Development in Infancy: The Elements of Social Interaction
• Chapter 6 The Emergence of Speech
• Chapter 7 The Acquisition of Word Meanings and The Dawn of Phrase Speech
• Chapter 8 The Emergence of Sentence Structure
• Chapter 9 Learning Grammar
• Chapter 10 Perceptual Development After Infancy
• Chapter 11 Perceptual Development and Recognition Memory
• Chapter 12 Memory for Scenes, Routes and Events
• Chapter 13 Understanding and Reasoning About Categories
• Chapter 14 Understanding and Reasoning About Time and Space
• Chapter 15 Representing Other Minds and The Development of Symbolic Thought
• Chapter 16 Symbolic Reasoning And Logicomathematical Thinking
• References
• Index