An Agency-Based Model of Human Cognitive Development

Abstract

Abstract This chapter provides a review and synthesis of the theoretical perspective of the book as a whole. The central argument of the preceding seven chapters of this volume, however, is that all this knowledge and all these skills exist within a domain-neutral psychological organization evolved to facilitate effective decision-making and action, that is, within an agency-based control system architecture comprising goals and intentions, perception and attention, cognitive representations and operations, decision-making and action, executive regulation and learning. The developmental proposal is that human cognitive ontogeny occurs within a series of qualitatively distinct architectures, each conserved from one of humans’ ancient evolutionary ancestors as an adaptation for a particular type of agentive decision-making in the context of a particular type of ecological unpredictability. Young infants, toddlers, and preschoolers thus operate within different agentive architectures—toddlers and preschoolers within both individual and shared versions—and these structure the ways in which children of each age experience and learn about the world. To repeat: developing children are not best characterized as Bayesian learners but rather, more generally, as Bayesian agents who learn in support of their agency.