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Social Learning and Cognition . T. L. Rosenthal and B. J. Zimmerman, New York: Academic Press, 1978, pp. 338, £9.75.

The theories of Piaget, Chomsky and Kohlberg on intellectual, language and moral development, are all attempts to describe and deliniate crucial stages involved in the maturation of cognitive processes. These structuralist theories assume that the brain is innately preprogrammed to move on from one stage to another like the metamorphoses of a caterpillar at a pre-ordained signal. The "deep structures" which control cognitive abilities are assumed to exist before experience and experience cannot create them. The sequence of mental development is therefore invariant so that a child at one developmental stage should not profit from teaching appropriate to a later stage. A social learning approach makes rather different predictions and the evidence tends to contradict a sharp, predetermined, stepwise progression. Children typically walk before they can swim but this fact does not preclude the possibility that babies can be taught to swim before they can walk. This book is an excellent review of the different approaches to cognitive and behavioural developments along with a clear description of a mass of experimental evidence which generally supports a social learning approach. Since this approach is rapidly taking over as a prevailing paradigm for many behavioural psychotherapists Social Learning and Cognition, will probably be given more than a cursory glance by readers of this Journal.