ABSTRACT
From infancy to adulthood, children acquire ever-greater cognitive skill, in domains ranging from reasoning to mathematics to wayfinding (DeLoache, Miller, & Pierroutsakos, 1998). For many years, the best account of this widespread cognitive growth was provided by Piaget’s theory, with its emphasis on qualitatively different stages of thought. Today, however, we know that cognitive development is not as rigidly stage-like as Piaget envisioned but is coordinated across domains. To explain how cognitive growth can be coordinated yet still progress unevenly across different domains, theorists have proposed general processing mechanisms that are implicated in performance across a wide range of tasks. Because the impact of these mechanisms is pervasive, developmental change therein can account for coordinated cognitive growth. Heterogeneity is expected because the general mechanisms are not implicated in all tasks and, when implicated, the extent of their contribution may vary.
