Cognitive Development

1. Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why human beings change over the course of their life.
2. Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of brain development.
3. Modularity of mind is the notion that a mind may, at least in part, be composed of innate neural structures or modules which have distinct established evolutionarily developed functions.
4. Domain-specific cognitive accounts hold the position (especially in modern cognitive development) that many aspects of cognition are supported by specialized, presumably evolutionarily specified, learning devices.
5. Domain-general cognitive accounts, such as Jean Piaget's theory, believed all learning is driven by the operation of a few general learning devices. Proponents of domain specificity argue that these theories are unable to overcome the problems of many learning domains, especially language.
6. The sociocultural perspective is a theory used in various fields such as psychology and is used to describe awareness of circumstances surrounding individuals and how their behaviors are affected specifically by their surrounding, social and cultural factors.