**8. Cognitive development, culture, and social context**

Piaget (1929, 1954, 1977) describes the process of intellectual development in terms of a movement from 'egocentrism' to 'decentring'. This is a cognitive developmental process that culminates in attaining the formal operational stage characterised by advanced deductive logic and the ability to reason from abstract to logical conclusions. One criticism of Piaget's approach is that it asserts that much of cognitive development is a result of maturational processes within the child, and the environment has very little impact on how cognitive abilities change over time. However, since Vygotsky (1975) highlighted the role of social interaction in cognitive development, more contemporary researchers (Rogoff & Chavajay, 1995; Lourenco & Machado, 1996; Serpell & Boykin, 1994; Downing & Chim, 2004) have tended to focus on the role of culture and social interactions in cognitive development. This view posits that children and young adults develop through a process of internalisation, absorbing knowledge from their social context which has a major impact on how their cognition develops over time.
