The Emanuel Miller Memorial Lecture 1995. Children's relationships: bridging the divide between cognitive and social development.

Recent research that bridges the divide between cognitive and social development in early childhood illuminates, but also sets challenges, for both fields. The implications of recent studies of children's social interactions for research on cognitive development--in particular, the development of understanding mind and emotion--are considered, then the implications of new cognitive research for understanding social development are discussed. An example of longitudinal research on children's relationships with family and friends between 2 and 7 years is described, highlighting links between individual differences in cognitive and social development.