ABSTRACT
When one looks at all that children come to know so rapidly, so inevitably—knowledge of language, of objects, of number, of space, of other minds—it is easy to conclude that development is driven by mechanisms and principles specific to each domain. There are strong logical arguments for this conclusion. What has to be learned in each domain is unique to that domain. Under the premise that one cannot get something from nothing, the necessary conclusion is that development in different domains must begin with different starting principles. There are also compelling data to support the domain specificity of cognitive development: Children exhibit learning biases specific to the content being learned. Indeed, much contemporary research in cognitive development consists of describing the domain-specific learning biases that guide knowledge acquisition.
