Development as a Whole

This is simply a short post to remind you of the artificial separation of developmental categories. When teaching development, we often divide cognition, language, physical, and social/emotional development. This is done to manage the amount of information; however, sometimes students fail to think about how these areas overlap. In fact, we really can’t think about one without considering the others. For example, physical development allows infants mobility, and mobility gives infants the opportunity to learn cognitive concepts related to depth, distance, and perspective. The development of language facilitates our cognitive understanding, and our cognitive understanding provides a foundation for language. Both language and cognition encourage social interaction and understanding of the perspectives of others. Therefore, as we discuss these areas of development individually by chapter in the textbook and materials, don’t hesitate to consider the relationships between them.