Child Development Theories and Examples

Examples Of Promising New Directions

The three central issues in the study of cognitive development—the collaboration of child and environment, the relationship of development in traditional research categories, and the methods necessary to investigate developmental questions—lead naturally to a reorientation of research. In this emerging reorientation, as we see it, the study of knowledge defined narrowly is deemphasized, and the study of the organization of behavior in general becomes the focus of developmental inquiry. The analysis of behavioral organization requires topics and methods that directly involve the collaboration of child and environment in development. A number of topics could potentially fit this criterion, but four especially promising new directions that deal with school-age children seem to us to merit the attention of cognitive-developmental researchers: (1) emotional development and its relation to cognitive development; (2) the relation of brain changes to cognitive development; (3) the role of social interaction, especially informal teaching, in cognitive development; and (4) the nature of schooling and literacy and their effects on cognitive development.

Cognitive Development And Emotional Dynamics

Emotion is becoming a central research topic, not only in the study of development but also in behavioral science more generally. From the 1940s until the mid-1970s, so little research was done on emotional development that it was fair to say that emotions had virtually disappeared from developmental science.
In the last 10 years, interest in emotional development has clearly been stirring, and much of the resulting research has dwelt on the relationship between cognition and emotion in development. Researchers on infancy have led the way, with arguments that emotions show major developmental reorganizations that are closely related to cognitive changes (Campos et al., 1978; Erode et al., 1976), and now research on cognition-emotion relationships in childhood is beginning to appear.