Overview
- Reviews vast literature on children’s understanding of cognition from early childhood to adolescence
- Traces development from concepts of mental states to knowledge of cognitive activity and epistemological thought
- Draws upon theories of consciousness, metacogniton, and sociocultural learning
- Views learning through introspection and social interaction as intertwined rather than alternative processes
- Identifies sources of information for learning about cognition
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Psychology (BRIEFSPSYCHOL)
Part of the book sub series: SpringerBriefs in Child Development (BRIEFSCD)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
Keywords
- Academic and social skills
- Cognitive monitoring and development
- Conceptual development
- Epistemological thought and development
- Metacognition and theory of mind
- Metamemory
- Phenomenological awareness and experience
- Self-awareness and social interaction
- Social cognition and introspection
- Social influences on development
About this book
During the past 25 years, a great deal of research and theory has addressed the development of young children’s understanding of mental states such as knowledge, beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions. Although developments in children’s understanding of the mind subsequent to early childhood has received less attention, in recent years a growing body of research has emerged examining understanding of psychological functioning during middle and late childhood. Combined with the literature on adolescent epistemological development, this research provides a broader picture of age-related changes in children’s understanding of the mind.
Guided by the goals of describing developmental changes in children’s concepts of cognitive functioning and identifying sources of information that contribute to learning about cognition, Children’s Discovery of the Active Mind organizes empirical literature concerning the development of children’s knowledge of cognitive activities from early childhood to adolescence and presents a conceptual framework that integrates children’s introspective activities with social influences on development. Bringing together theoretical and empirical work from developmental, cognitive, and social psychology, the author argues that rather than depending upon a single source of information, developmental progress is driven by combinations of children’s conceptual knowledge of mental functioning, children’s phenomenological awareness of their own cognitive activities, and children’s social experience.
Reviews
From the reviews:
“The question of how and when children come to understand their own mental activities and those of others (theory of mind) has generated a large body of research over the last several decades. In Children’s Discovery of the Active Mind … Bradford Pillow seeks to summarize, organize, and conceptualize these voluminous investigations. … Pillow uses the book to put forth his own model of the development of children’s knowledge of cognitive activities. … Pillow obviously wrote for those researching theory of mind.” (David Elkind, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 57 (45), November, 2012)Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bradford Pillow, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychology at Northern Illinois University. Since receiving his Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1986, he has conducted research on the development of metacognition and social cognition in preschool children, elementary school children, and adolescents. His research focuses primarily on children’s ability to infer another person’s knowledge, beliefs, or visual experience, children’s understanding of cognitive processes such as attention, inference, comprehension, and memory, children’s ability to monitor their own cognitive states, and children’s explanations of another person’s behavior. Currently, he is Associate Editor for The Journal of Genetic Psychology, and Consulting Editor for Child Development.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Children’s Discovery of the Active Mind
Book Subtitle: Phenomenological Awareness, Social Experience, and Knowledge About Cognition
Authors: Bradford H. Pillow
Series Title: SpringerBriefs in Psychology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2248-8
Publisher: Springer New York, NY
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science, Behavioral Science and Psychology (R0)
Copyright Information: Bradford H. Pillow 2012
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4614-2247-1Published: 22 November 2011
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4614-2248-8Published: 23 November 2011
Series ISSN: 2192-8363
Series E-ISSN: 2192-8371
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 99
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Developmental Psychology, Educational Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology