The Child's Point of View : The Development of Cognition and Language

This valuable text, which was originally published to international critical acclaim in 1986, has been completely revised and updated. Maureen Cox investigates how children develop an awareness and understanding of other points of view, whether through greater sensitivity or more advanced cognitive thinking. She challenges the notion that children are egocentric, and focuses positively on what children can and can't do rather than approach them as inferior adults.

Her examination of the child's point of view is related to the development of visual perspective, drawing, and speech. In addition, she has added a major new section on children's understanding of other people's mental states--what researchers often refer to as `theory of the mind'--in which she clearly demonstrates that they exhibit quite remarkable sophistication in their awareness of other people's beliefs and feelings.

THE CHILD'S POINT OF VIEW is aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students in psychology as well as teachers and students of child development and education.

Maureen V. Cox is currently Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of York. She is editor of Are Young Children Egocentric? (1980) and Visual Order: The Nature and Development of Pictorial Representation (1985); and author of Children's Drawings: The State of the Art (1991).