Cross-Pollination in Cognitive Development

Given the breadth of topics in child development (such as the ones represented in this encyclopedia), it has become easier and more efficient to tackle different research topics separately and in parallel rather than trying to understand everything all at once. As a result, research areas in child development, and for science in general, typically remain segregated. There has been tremendous progress in each research area, such as cognition, motor, social, and emotional development. Despite the efficiency [Page 490]of such scientific inquiry, this segregated method of inquiry creates what some refer to as a “humpty dumpty” problem.

In other words, many aspects of development are studied in isolation. In real life, development progresses as a system, where many aspects interact in useful and interesting ways. Therefore, scientific inquiry requires finding a balance between investigating intractable problems that contain too many components (i.e., investigating all components at once) and investigating problems that are too isolated and are not considered within a system. Cross-pollination across well-developed diverse research areas allows researchers to balance specialization and broad inquiry. This entry describes the benefits and challenges of cross-pollination in cognitive development and provides examples of cross-pollination research.

Given the depth scientists have achieved in a broad range of research areas, the research environment now is ripe for such cross-pollinating work. Two of the most common avenues of cross-pollination among research areas (a) are investigating how one factor may cause another (e.g., how motor development causes changes in perceptual development) and (b) adopting concepts from one area to another (e.g., adopting concepts from language learning to visual learning). The first pushes research that investigates a system, and the second draws novel links between two previously disconnected research areas, which may be part of one system.