Building Bridges: Cognitive Development in Typical and Atypical Development

How can the study of typical development inform our understanding of atypical development? How can the study of atypical development inform our understanding of typical development? This book addresses these questions in the context of cognitive development―a discipline that focuses on the changes and continuity that characterize the intellectual processes that support mental life. The contributions range from a consideration of what autism teaches us about the development of attention, to how the study of multiracial and gender-nonconforming children enriches and challenges traditional approaches to understanding social perception. This book demonstrates how two fields of study that too often operate independently can benefit from each other theoretically, empirically, and practically. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Cognition and Development.

Vikram Jaswal is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, USA.

Nameera Akhtar is Professor of Psychology at University of California-Santa Cruz, USA.

Jacob A. Burack is Professor of Educational and Counselling Psychology at McGill University, Canada.