Sophian, C. (1997). Growing points for cognitive-developmental theories: Characterizing innate foundations for learning. Cognitive Development, 12, 345-348.

In this reply to commentaries on my "Beyond competence" paper, I suggest that innate cognitive structures may be more like a set of tools than like maps or skeletons that specify one and only one way of organizing cognition. While any particular cognitive tool is likely to lend itself better to some applications than to others, it may not be the case that each tool applies to one and only one domain. The fluidity of this conception of cognitive structures allows for the variation that is so uniquitous in development--variation across cultures, across individuals, across tasks, and even across trials within a single individual's performance on a single task.

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