Everyday Cognition: Its Development in Social Context

In Everyday Cognition leading scholars in developmental psychology, cognitive science, and anthropology have joined forces to examine how thinking and cognitive development are influenced by social context. John Seely Brown, Michael Cole, Herbert P. Ginsburg, Patricia Greenfirld, Hugh Mehan, Sylvia Scribner, and Sheldon H. White, with the editors and others, examine the ways in which thinking occurs in the real world of home, school, and workplace, as well as in the laboratory. They stress the problem-solving nature of most everyday cognitive activity and the extent to which it is shaped by social interaction with others. Overall, the book represents the shift in developmental psychology from adherence to fixed Piagetian stages of development toward awareness of the relation between child and environment, emphasizing the context and situations in which children learn to become adults.