Understanding cognitive development - Maggie McGonigle-Chalmers

Understanding Cognitive Development provides a fresh, evidence-based research perspective on the story of children's cognitive development in the first ten years of human life.

Starting with a brief survey of the key theoretical positions that have come to define developmental psychology, the textbook then focuses on the different cognitive abilities as they emerge throughout early development. Uniquely, it examines these in terms of their interdependence; that is how skills such as perception, memory, language and reasoning relate to one another. This holistic treatment allows students to see the many important intersections in this critical phase of human life development.

This textbook employs a novel design that will be of immense help to both students and instructors and is intended to be read at two levels: at the first level, it provides a fully referenced explanatory account of experimental research on cognitive development with complete attention to the needs of students who have never been exposed to experimental methodology nor studies in cognitive development before.

At the second level, and mapped directly onto numbered sub-sections within the text, the author uses illustrative panels designed along the lines of PowerPoint presentations to summarise studies and key findings, employing lots of pictorial material together with bullet-points to give vividness and texture to the material covered. These panels are replicated on the accompanying companion website in PowerPoint for lecturers and students to make further use of in teaching and revision.
Revision points are provided at the end of every chapter.

Rich in academic coverage, including a widespread database of the most important empirical research in the field, this textbook will be essential reading for students of cognitive development and developmental psychology across psychology and education.

Margaret McGonigle (AKA Maggie McGonigle and Maggie McGonigle-Chalmers) is a Faculty Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, having retired from her post as Senior Lecturer in the Psychology Department in 2012. She has published research articles and book chapters on comparative and developmental cognition, and more recently on cognitive functioning in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, ranging from perceptuo-motor skills to language dysfunction. She is co-editor (and author) on The Complex Mind: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012). Other publications are listed at: http://www.psy.ed.ac.uk/affiliated_faculty/maggie_mcGonigle.php

This textbook is a pleasure to read. It covers all you need to know about cognitive development. It tells you about recent research of such important mental functions as perception, language, memory, social communication and symbolic thought - from birth to ten years. The beauty of the book is that it is designed to act as a faithful companion to teachers and students striving to explain, understand, report and revise. By providing a clear structure and a coherent theoretical background McGonigle-Chalmers makes the fine-grained detail of experiments exceptionally intelligible.
Uta Frith

Maggie McGonigle-Chalmers has written a compelling introduction to cognitive development. It will appeal to students and teachers alike - for its incisive writing, its judicious choice of empirical findings, its thoughtful organization, and its wealth of visual materials.
Paul L. Harris