ABSTRACT
Cognitive development depends on the maturation of intracortical connections and the differentiation of cortical subsystems (Thatcher, 1994). As far as cognitive development has been considered in this dependency, (neo)Piagetian theories have been predominant. The established relationship between Piagetian stages and cortical development is based on the observation that there are cycles in both developmental processes that can be loosely tied together (Hudspeth & Pribram, 1990; Thatcher, 1994). Neural network models of cognitive processes (Grossberg, 1982, 1988) open the way to relate cortical and cognitive development in a more rigorous fashion because in such models cortical developmental parameters such as synaptic density can be incorporated at an aggregated level (Cowan & Ermentrout, 1978). The inherent cognitive complexity of Piagetian tasks seems to make the establishment of a rigorous connection between cognitive and cortical development prohibitive. By complexity is meant that numerous cognitive subprocesses are involved. The first implication of this observation is that modeling at the neural network level is not within our scope for the time being. The second is that the many cognitive subprocesses involved are related to different cortical subsystems, with each subsystem characterized by different cortical maturation cycles. In such a case demonstration of clear-cut relationships becomes difficult.
