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Traditional approaches to cognitive development can tell us a great deal about the internal processes involved in learning. Sociocultural perspectives, on the other hand, provide valuable insights into the influences on learning of relationship and cultural variables. This volume provides a much-needed bridge between these disparate bodies of research, examining the specific processes through which children internalize the lessons learned in social contexts. The book reviews current findings on four specific domains of cognitive development--attention, memory, problem solving, and planning. The course of intellectual growth in each domain is described, and social factors that support or constrain it are identified. The focus throughout is on how family, peer, and community factors influence not only what a child learns, but also how learning occurs. Supporting her arguments with solid empirical data, the author convincingly shows how attention to sociocultural factors can productively complement more traditional avenues of investigation.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• I The Social Foundations of Cognitive Development
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Processes of Change: The "How" of Cognitive Development
• 3 The Sociocultural Context of Cognitive Development
• II The Development of Specific Higher Mental Functions in Social Context
• 4 Acquiring Knowledge: Intersubjectivity, Joint Attention, and Social Referencing
• 5 Remembering: The Social Construction of the Past
• 6 Solving and Learning to Solve Problems in Social Context
• 7 Constructing the Future: Planning in Social Context
• 8 Conclusions and Future Directions

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CHOICE Review

An accomplished researcher in this area, Gauvain (Univ. of California, Riverside) has written an engaging account of the social and cultural context she believes fosters children's cognitive development. This is an important contribution to a field that has been dominated by work from other perspectives. The successors of Piaget have emphasized the child's role in understanding environmental events while researchers with an information-processing orientation have focused on the ways children represent their experiences and make use of knowledge. Gauvain broadens these ideas by examining the social context in which developmental activities take place and the social interchanges through which cognitive skills emerge. The author does a superb job of showing how social forces are crucial to children's progress in key cognitive areas such as memory, problem solving, and planning for the future. The book is well written and interesting, integrating both laboratory studies and naturalistic observations of child behavior. Gauvain's command of the professional literature is excellent. A must-have book for libraries serving undergraduate and graduate programs in psychology and education. R. Madigan University of Alaska, Anchorage

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Mary Gauvain, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Riverside. She received her master's degree in Sociology of Education from Stanford University and her doctoral degree in Developmental Psychology from the University of Utah. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and has served on the Executive Committee of the APA Division of Developmental Psychology. She is also a member of the Society for Research in Child Development. Her research on children's cognitive development in social and cultural contexts is widely published and has been funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and The Spencer Foundation, among others.