Taking a stand midway between Piaget's constructivism and Fodor's nativism, Annette Karmiloff-Smith offers an exciting new theory of developmental change that embraces both approaches, showing how both are necessary to a fundamental theory of human cognition. Karmiloff-Smith shifts the focus from what cognitive science can offer the study of development to what a developmental perspective can offer cognitive science, presenting a coherent portrait of the flexibility and creativity of the human mind as it develops from infancy to middle childhood.
1995 British Psychological Society Book Award
A Bradford Book. Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change series
Endorsements
". . . deserves wide readership by both developmentalists and nondevelopmentalists who need an overview of the state of the art. Clearly and comprehensively, Karmiloff-Smith shows the highly structured ways in which different representational processes emerge from infancy onwards." —Andrew Whiten, Nature