ABSTRACT
Most of the literature on cognitive development focuses on the description of a generalised, universal, normal progress from the cognition of infancy to the cognition of adulthood, with little attention to variation in the rate or detailed patterning of this development, and less to the possibility of different developmental paths. Most of the literature on individual differences in cognition takes a nondevelopmental view, even when looking for the factors that, throughout the years of childhood, might be affecting the quantity and quality of cognition. There is an excuse for this separation, in the pragmatic need to limit researchers’ focus and concentrate their efforts, and it has recently been argued that individual variation and cognitive development in any case have different causes (Anderson 1992). Nevertheless, my own feeling is that there should be some attempt to consider the work on individual differences within cognitive development, as this is likely to improve our understanding of both (see also Richardson 1991, Scarr 1992). Chapter 5 of this volume therefore looks at causes of differences in cognitive development.
