ABSTRACT
The branch of psychology which studies the development of thinking is usually called cognitive developmental psychology. The word ‘cognitive’ refers to knowledge, but not in the general sense. When people talk about knowledge, they often mean the kind of information that it would be useful to call upon in order to answer questions in games such as Trivial Pursuit and Blockbusters, or in order to answer GCSE exam questions. In contrast, cognitive developmentalists think of knowledge as referring to understanding about things. So, for example, the finding that 5-year-olds are terrible at communicating on the telephone, because they seem to overlook the fact that the listener cannot see what they can see, or does not know what they know, might be taken as a symptom that the young child is incapable of putting himself or herself in someone else’s shoes. Cognitive developmentalists look at particular difficulties children may have, such as poor communication ability, and then draw general conclusions about the child’s immature understanding of the world. An example would be the conclusion that young children cannot take into account another person’s point of view. An exciting feature of cognitive developmental psychology is observing some of the things children say and do in various situations, and speculating about the meaning of these things in terms of the child’s understanding of the world.
