Cognitive development
Cognitive development is how thinking, memory and reasoning grow and reorganize from infancy to adulthood.
At a glance
Key signals
0% cross fields · reaches 2 more
- Developmental Psychology
- Psychology
- Explanation
- Examples
- Misconception
- Sourced relations
- Attribution
Dependencies
What this concept builds on and what it makes possible — derived from the atlas’s dependency, causal and structural relations, not from every related edge.
Foundations · builds on
Cognitive developmentemerges fromWorking memoryEstablished
Thinking grows as memory grows.
Mechanism: Expanding working-memory capacity in childhood lets children hold and combine more ideas, enabling more complex reasoning.
System context
Developmental stageis part ofCognitive developmentEstablished
Development runs in stages.
Mechanism: Stage theories describe cognitive development as an ordered sequence of qualitatively distinct phases.
Structural role & consequence
Interpreted from the current atlas graph — what the connections mean, not just how many there are.
Currently dark in the atlas: no key date stored · 3 of 3 of its relations lack claim-level evidence.
atlas representation · Describes the current Thinking OS representation, not the state of the world.
Builds on 1 foundation (requires / depends-on / derived-from / emerges-from).
structural · Structural graph analysis — not a claim of importance, causation or history.
Structural neighbourhood: 3 → 19 → 56 concepts reachable within 3 hops.
structural · Structural reach — being reachable is not the same as being understood.
All 3 of its relationships stay within its own discipline — a field-specific concept in the current atlas.
structural · Structural graph analysis — not a claim of importance, causation or history.
cross-field
3 within-field, 0 cross-field
Strengths & constraints
Constraints
- Evidence coverage currently thin in the atlas — few of its relationships carry claim-level evidence. atlas representation
- No dated history stored — the atlas records no key date for this concept. atlas representation
Conditions
- Its dependency reading rests on 1 foundation relation. structural
- Read structurally — most of its relationships carry no external evidence yet, so claims here are graph-derived. structural
Dependency radial
What this concept builds on (left) and what it makes possible (right) — derived from dependency and causal relations.
Seen through each discipline
How this concept sits in each of its fields — derived from its real connections in the graph, not asserted.
Through this lens it connects to Attachment theory and Developmental stage.
Cognitive development through the Developmental Psychology lens →
Through this lens it connects to Working memory, Attachment theory and Developmental stage.
Related ideas to explore
Concepts that look related but are not yet connected here — candidates for a connection to reason about, not established links.
- Connects 3 other ideas across 2 disciplines.
- A cross-disciplinary bridge — its connections reach into 2 other fields.
- Most of its connections are of the “Cause & effect” kind.
Derived from the graph’s real structure — observations, not a score.
Sources
- Three aspects of cognitive development (1976) verified