Context and cognition

the long version

The study of cognitive development in children has moved through three identifiable phases in the last twenty years ... Work on cognitive development has recently entered a third phase, in which theorists are beginning to stress an inextricable link between contextual constraints and the acquisition of knowledge. Moreover, the physical context is being reunited with the social, within the thought process. The contemporary view tends to be that cognition is typically situated in a social and physical context and is rarely, if ever, decontextualized ...