Understanding Cognitive Development

Margaret McGonigle (AKA Maggie McGonigle and Maggie McGonigle-Chalmers) is a Faculty Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, having retired from her post as Senior Lecturer in the Psychology Department in 2012. She has published research articles and book chapters on comparative and developmental cognition, and more recently on cognitive functioning in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, ranging from perceptuo-motor skills to language dysfunction. She is co-editor (and author) on The Complex Mind: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012). Other publications are listed at: http://www.psy.ed.ac.uk/affiliated_faculty/maggie_mcGonigle.php

Introduction: Studying how the mind grows Sensory development and visual perception during early infancy Perceptual development during the first year: the multisensory infant Sensorimotor development in infancy: gaining control in a physical environment Sensorimotor development in infancy: the elements of social interaction The emergence of speech The acquisition of word meanings and the dawn of phrase speech The emergence of sentence structure Learning grammar Perceptual development after infancy Perceptual development and recognition memory Memory for scenes, routes and events Understanding and reasoning about categories Understanding and reasoning about time and space Representing other minds and the development of symbolic thought Symbolic reasoning and logicomathematical thinking

This textbook is a pleasure to read. It covers all you need to know about cognitive development. It tells you about recent research of such important mental functions as perception, language, memory, social communication and symbolic thought - from birth to ten years. The beauty of the book is that it is designed to act as a faithful companion to teachers and students striving to explain, understand, report and revise. By providing a clear structure and a coherent theoretical background McGonigle-Chalmers makes the fine-grained detail of experiments exceptionally intelligible. -- Uta Frith Maggie McGonigle-Chalmers has written a compelling introduction to cognitive development. It will appeal to students and teachers alike - for its incisive writing, its judicious choice of empirical findings, its thoughtful organization, and its wealth of visual materials. -- Paul L. Harris