The Relationship between Social and Cognitive Development

The young child’s interpersonal environment obviously has powerful effects on both his cognitive and social development. To consider these effects separately, as we have attempted to do thus far, is instructive but in many ways artificial. It is becoming more and more obvious that social and cognitive competencies develop from shared organizational processes and are inextricably bound up with each other. Thus, any specific kind of social interaction is inevitably partially dependent on cognitive processes; cognitions, in turn, are influenced and modified by interpersonal interactions.