The Emergence of Strategies in Cognitive Development

Abstract

The topic of emergence is of crucial importance in studying human cognitive development. Namely, the latter is characterized by the sudden appearance of new abilities, which involve a number of new correlations (and synchronizations) between actions and behaviors already present before within subject behavioral repertory. It is tempting to think of these phenomena as of occurrences of new coherent states of cognitive system, emergent as a consequence of some cognitive ``phase transition'' (see, to this regard, Pessa and Penna, 1996). However, it is to be underlined that such a view of cognitive development is rather vague and qualitative. We need, therefore, a more precise definition of ``cognitive emergence'', which, however, can be given only within well-defined (and whence limited) contexts. In this paper we will take into consideration the particular context of cognitive strategies used by children in solving arithmetic problems, more precisely the ones relative to the operation of multiplication.