Cognitive development: Looking across at growing up

✍ Scribed by Charles M. Super

• Book ID: 102792266
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1980
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 678 KB
• Volume: 1980
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1520-3247
• DOI: 10.1002/cd.23219800808

✦ Synopsis

Theories of thinking come in two types, horizontal and vertical. The vertical ones are most familiar to us as students of child development, as psychologists and educators, and as observers of our own children's growth. Vertical theories focus on development, and they are elaborated in studies that apply the microscope to the way people at different ages think about and respond to carefully designed problems. Whether they speak of stages or accretion, differentiation or integration, structure or process, such theories are all directed toward describing and explaining the ways in which children do not think like us, but eventually come to do so.

Anthropology, by and large, has horizontal theories. Anthropologists use the telescope and, peering over the heads of children, look The work described in this chapter was supported, in part, by grants from the William T. Grant Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Spencer Foundation, and the National Institute of Mental Health (grant no. 1-ROI-MH33281). All statements made and views expressed m the sole responsibility of the author. N m Directions for Child &velopmd, 8, I980 59 Charles M. Super, a developmental psychologid, is Research