ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests a conceptual framework dynamic field theory to unify such disparate results. It demonstrates the dynamic field model to simulate experiments that give conflicting results about what children know about the properties of objects. Jean Piaget left a complex legacy for contemporary developmental psychology. He also gave us a theory of the process of development as the gradual assimilation and accommodation of properties of the world through sensori-motor activities. Piaget's notions of the sensori-motor bases of cognition are still likely correct. In 1994, Thelon and Smith called this state of affairs a 'crisis in cognitive development'. It is nearly a decade since their book, and the crisis in development has not abated and perhaps has become even worse. The troubling state of affairs in cognitive development comes from the styles of experiments designed to probe the minds of infants and toddlers who cannot give verbal responses.
