Acceso usuarios
Jean-Pierre Thibaut, Sabine Gelaes
The central issue is the development of analytic and holistic processing. Following a presentation of the most important paradigms in the field, we summarize models according to which analytic processing follows holistic processing during development. In contrast, other authors claimed that from the start, young children have analytical abilities which increase during development. We will review different conceptions of these two modes of processing (Cook, Kemler Nelson, Shepp, Smith and Ward) as well as their representational presuppositions. We will discuss the limits of each paradigm. We will also rephrase holistic explanations in terms of analytic explanations. The last part of the paper summarizes recent work that characterizes the nature of existing differences between the younger and older children in terms of selective attention capacity, perceptual différenciation, inhibition and memorisation.
