Agency and Cognitive Development

by Michael Tomasello

Children of different ages live in different worlds. This is partly due to as children learn more and more about the world they experience it in different ways. But learning cannot be the whole story or else children could learn anything at any age - which they cannot.

In a startlingly original proposal, Michael Tomasello argues that children of different ages live and learn in different worlds because their capacities to cognitively represent and operate on their experience change in significant ways over the first years of life. These capacities change because they are elements in a maturing cognitive architecture evolved for agentive decision making and action, including in shared agencies in which individuals must mentally coordinate with others. The developmental proposal is that from birth infants are goal-directed agents who cognitively represent and learn about actualities; at 9 -12 months toddlers become intentional (and joint) agents who also imaginatively and perspectivally represent and learn about possibilities; and at 3-4 years preschool youngsters become metacognitive (and collective) agents who also metacognitively represent and learn about objective/normative necessities. These developing agentive architectures - originally evolved in humans' evolutionary ancestors for particular types of decision making and action - help to explain why children learn what they do when they do.

This novel agency-based model of cognitive development recognizes the important role of (Bayesian) learning, but at the same time places it in the context of the overall agentive organization of children at particular developmental periods.

330 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 6, 2024

About the author

Michael Tomasello is an American developmental and comparative psychologist. He is a co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Reviews

[Teo · Rating 4 out of 5]

2025.10.22–2025.10.27

Contents

Tomasello M (2024) (09:00) Agency and Cognitive Development

List of Figures

1. Not By Learning Alone
1.1. Brief Historical Background
1.2. Agentive Organization
1.3. A Three-Part Proposal

2. Agency and Cognition
2.1. Agentive Organization and Decision-Making
2.1.1. Control System Organization and Architecture
2.1.2. Three Types of Individual Agency
2.1.3. Two Types of Shared Agency
2.1.4. Evidence for the Evolutionary Story
2.2. Human Cognitive Ontogeny
2.2.1. Developmental Timing
2.2.2. The Developmental Hypothesis

Part I: Early Infancy

3. Goal-Directed Agency and Iconic Representations
3.1. Before Agentive Actions
3.1.1. Attention to Objects and Events in Space
3.1.2. Attention to Animate Beings
3.1.3. Iconic Representations for Recognition and Learning
3.2. Early Goal-Directed Actions and Decision-Making
3.2.1. First Goal-Directed Actions
3.2.2. Go/No-Go Decision-Making
3.2.3. Agency and Causality
3.2.4. Infant Learning
3.3. Interacting in the Social World
3.3.1. Understanding Others as Goal-Directed
3.3.2. Getting People to Do Things
3.3.3. Engaging with Social Partners
3.4. Infants as Goal-Directed Agents

Part II: Toddlerhood

4. Intentional Agency and Imaginative Representations
4.1. Intentional Action and Decision-Making
4.1.1. Thinking, Planning, and Imaginative Representations
4.1.2. Either/Or Decision-Making and Inhibitory Control
4.1.3. The Executive Tier
4.2. Understanding Causality
4.2.1. Making Things Happen via Intermediaries
4.2.2. Understanding External Causes
4.2.3. The Logical Structure of Causal Inferences
4.2.4. Hypothesis-Directed Learning and Re-representation
4.3. Understanding Intentionality
4.3.1. Understanding Others’ Goals/Intentions and Attention/Knowledge
4.3.2. Understanding Others’ Decision-Making
4.3.3. The “Simulation + Theory” Theory
4.4. Toddlers as Intentional Agents and Theorists

5. Joint Agency and Perspectival Representations
5.1. Collaboration and Joint Intentionality
5.1.1. Joint Goals and Joint Attention
5.1.2. The Importance of Roles
5.1.3. The Importance of Perspectives
5.1.4. Self-Other Equivalence
5.1.5. Cognition for Collaboration
5.2. Cooperative/Referential Communication
5.2.1. The Referential Intention
5.2.2. Embedding the Referential Intention in the Social Intention
5.2.3. Cognition for Cooperative/Referential Communication
5.3. Linguistic Communication
5.3.1. Linguistic Symbols as Perspectival Representations
5.3.2. Grammatical Constructions as Role-Based Schemas
5.3.3. Discourse as Joint Attention to (and Perspectives on) a Topic
5.3.4. Cognition for Linguistic Communication
5.4. Toddlers’ Joint Agency and Intentionality

Part III: Early Childhood

6. Metacognitive Agency and Multi-Perspectival Representations
6.1. A Hierarchical Model of Executive Regulation
6.2. Metacognitive Decision-Making
6.2.1. Reflective Decision-Making
6.2.2. Joint Decision-Making with Peers
6.3. Metacognitive Learning and Re-representation
6.3.1. Metacognitive Learning: Belief Revision
6.3.2. Metacognitive Re-representation
6.4. Some Multi-Perspectival Representations
6.4.1. Object Classes
6.4.2. Physical Symbols
6.4.3. Natural Number
6.4.4. Causal Nets
6.4.5. Summary
6.5. Metacognitive Organization and Concepts

7. Collective Agency and Objective/Normative Representations
7.1. Collective Agency and Intentionality
7.2. “Objective” Knowledge and Concepts
7.2.1. Conceptual Perspective-Taking
7.2.2. Appearance-Reality
7.2.3. Linguistic Aspectuality
7.2.4. Beliefs
7.2.5. Reasons for Beliefs
7.2.6. Developmental Explanations
7.2.7. Summary
7.3. Normative Attitudes and Concepts
7.3.1. Commitment/Obligation
7.3.2. Fairness
7.3.3. Social Norms
7.3.4. Institutional Facts
7.3.5. Developmental Explanations
7.3.6. Summary
7.4. Real and Ideal

Part IV: Moving Forward

8. An Agency-Based Model of Human Cognitive Development
8.1. Two Key Transitions in Human Cognitive Development
8.1.1. The 9–12-Month Transition: Agentive Organization
8.1.2. The 9–12-Month Transition: New Dimensions of Cognitive Content
8.1.3. The 3–4-Year Transition: Agentive Organization
8.1.4. The 3–4-Year Transition: New Dimensions of Cognitive Content
8.1.5. Three Existential Modalities
8.2. Processes of Developmental Change
8.2.1. Maturation
8.2.2. Learning
8.2.3. The Role of Language
8.2.4. Constructive Thinking and Re-Representation
8.3. Looking Ahead
8.3.1. Becoming Human
8.3.2. Predictions and Questions
8.3.3. On to Middle Childhood

9. The Child-as-Scientist Revisited

End Matter
References
Index

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome.