ABSTRACT
Effective economic action requires the development of both practical skills and reasoning skills. Thus as well as showing that young children's non-functional economic behaviour can be adaptive in a social sense, the child-centred approach suggests that it may well also serve a developmental function. Socio-developmental approach presents an alternative to the cognitive developmentalist orthodoxy. Obviously the development towards effective economic behaviour cannot be accounted for solely in terms of the development of waiting and saving skills. The significance that a socio-developmental theory of economic development assigns to transient non-mature stages is quite different. Consequently the development of economic behaviour can be seen as occurring on two separate, but complementary levels. In short although the economic behaviour of the 6 year olds can be described on one level as maladaptive, on another level it is adaptive in terms of the value derived from conformity to specific social norms.
