Review of How children develop social understanding.

Abstract

JEREMY CARPENDALE and CHARLIE LEWIS (Eds.) How Children Develop Social Understanding Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, 311 pages (ISBN 1-4051-0549-1, C$29.95 Hardcover) Reviewed by JACK MARTIN Toward end of this recently published volume, Carpendale and Lewis mention several criticisms of an earlier, article-lengdi presentation of their theoretical work on development of children's social understanding. One of criticisms they cite is that their social-constructivist, relational account is nothing new - the does not make a new contribution to literature on social understanding (p. 249) . If this is interpreted to mean that Carpendale and Lewis do not give us an entirely original grand narrative that explains everything we want to know about development of children's social understanding, criticism is correct. However, to have such a concern is to miss significance of what these authors have accomplished in this book that Michael Tomasello, on back jacket, correcdy announces as the best book there is on children's social-cognitive development - full stop. How can this be if there is no brave new in offing? In my opinion, what Carpendale and Lewis have accomplished is a more modest and ultimately more valuable triune of theoretical contributions. Carpendale and Lewis' first theoretical contribution is to have provided a marvellously coherent description of a vast amount of extant research and concerning children's and adolescents' social interaction and social understanding. Through their capable guidance, we are taken on a highly informative, intellectually satisfying tour of assumptions, perspectives, research programs and methods, controversies, and debates that have defined theory of mind and related areas of inquiry over past 15 to 20 years. When necessary, they have supplemented this intensive examination of recent past with more chronologically distant sources and background discussions to ensure that reader is able to position recent work within more longstanding psychological and philosophical traditions. So successful is this tour that it is possible to visualize children participating in various studies that are discussed, researchers pouring over their data and statistical analyses, and conference participants passionately debating their differing interpretations and perspectives. Both focal phenomena and ways they have been studied are vividly portrayed and illustrated in ways that are simultaneously informative and revealing. Experimental tasks, research strategies, and logics of interpretation are rendered easily accessible even to those previously unfamiliar with research of this kind, but in a way that still captures critical attention of researchers fully engaged in this area of inquiry. As a second theoretical contribution, Carpendale and Lewis provide an important synthesis of all that they describe so comprehensively and clearly. This synthesis is a social constructivist, relational account that combines key insights from Vygotsky and Wittgenstein with their interpersonal, contextualist reading (following Chapman, 1988, 1991, 1999) of Piaget. Carpendale and Lewis make it clear that genetic and epigenetic contributions to human biology and neurophysiology are absolutely essential requisites for human social and psychological development. However, just as most exquisitely wrought musical instruments cannot be equated with musical performance per se, they resist equating social development with its bodily and cerebral requisites, steadfastly maintaining that meaning, knowledge, and significance that define psychological life of persons are constituted gradually during ontogenesis within social interactivity with others. Through developmentally early forms of dyadic social interaction and joint attention with caregivers (e.g., touching and being touched, pointing, gaze following, social referencing, and turn taking), young children progress to more complex, triadic engagement with others and world that provide social, relational bases on which language is constructed. …