Abstract
The central philosophical question behind the research in cognitive development is the origins of knowledge. The two classic philosophical answers are those of the British Empiricists who put the origins of knowledge in perception and those of the nativist-rationalists who place them in the innate structures of mind that interpret percepts. Virtually all contemporary theory rejects these two extremes in favor of their “interaction.” The traditional rationalist perspective is being increasingly challenged. The challenges push for a fundamental reformation of the nature of perceiving, knowing, and developmental process. This chapter reviews the recent empirical advances that lie behind the challenges. The chapter begins by considering the traditional view, which segregates timeless knowledge structures from the real-time processes of perceiving. Then, the chapter discusses the new data about the perceptual categories in the brain as activity-dependent processes and the data on the perceptual and category development in infants and young children and finds parallel phenomena that suggest that perceiving and knowing in children are also made and maintained by activity.