ABSTRACT
This chapter is about how the cognitive development of young children can be affected by early childhood programs. It therefore does not describe everything that psychologists know or believe about cognitive development in young children. Others have already offered general overviews thoroughly and thoughtfully; see, for example, Volume 3 of the Handbook of Child Psychology (Mussen, Flavell, & Markman, 1998), or the more British-oriented volume Childhood Cognitive Development (Goswami, 2002a). Because I only have one chapter in which to work, I will be more selective about topics, focusing especially on matters central to preschool and primary education. Some readers may therefore find the chapter unbalanced, and may wonder why I have reduced or omitted topics that get more attention in other forums. Or they may wonder, by contrast, whether certain topics described in detail in this chapter really count as “cognitive development,” as the topics sometimes get treated as noncognitive elsewhere. As the author, I take responsibility for any of these frustrations. But I will try to persuade how selectivity is not only appropriate but also is the cost of relevance to early childhood education. Not everything that developmental psychologists do, in other words, matters to early childhood teachers.
