Enablement and Constraint

Abstract

A general issue for understanding development concerns the interplay between enablement and constraint, gains and losses. Notions of expertise provide one framework commonly used to consider such questions. Three features often come to the foreground, if one thinks of cognitive development in terms of acquiring expertise: 1) the domain-general character of initial learning processes, 2) a presumed developmental shift from an amassed set of facts and experiences to a derived set of abstract principles, and 3) the expectation that more practice and more experience lead to more knowledge and that more knowledge leads to more powerful learning. While early cognitive development does encompass the accumulation of knowledge and skill in ways that meet these expectations, it also profoundly manifests 1) domain-specific initial learning states and mechanisms, 2) abstract frameworks of understanding that precede and shape the accumulation of bodies of more specific knowledge rather than being derived from them, and 3) learning mechanisms and trajectories where less is more. In this chapter, the author discusses these features of early development as a way to contribute to a lifespan metatheory that comprehensively encompasses the full scope of cognitive development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved) (from the chapter)