DYNAMICS OF COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENT - A UNIFYING APPROACH TO UNIVERSAL TRENDS AND INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES

In this article, I discuss the importance of inter- and intraindividual differences in understanding development in general and cognitive development in particular. Rather than treating such differences as noise that needs to be exorcised from the data, it is argued that such variability provides invaluable information about development. In fact, between and within individual instabilities represent an important cache of information about development, one that needs to be fully exploited. In order to do this, a new dynamic modeling framework is discussed, one in which individual variability is key to the analysis and understanding of development.