Developmental insights into mature cognition

• Three cases show how developmental research informs the study of adult cognition.
• Development shows both the ubiquity of statistical learning and its limits.
• Development suggests how cognition is and is not reducible to neural descriptions.
• Development highlights abilities for navigating socially distributed knowledge.

Three cases are described that illustrate new ways in which developmental research is informing the study of cognition in adults: statistical learning, neural substrates of cognition, and extended concepts. Developmental research has made clear the ubiquity of statistical learning while also revealing is limitations as a stand-alone way to acquire knowledge. With respect to neural substrates, development has uncovered links between executive processing and fronto-striatal circuits while also pointing to many aspects of high-level cognition that may not be neatly reducible to coherent neural descriptions. For extended concepts, children have made especially clear the weaknesses of intuitive theories in both children and adults while also illustrating other cognitive capacities that are used at all ages to navigate the socially distributed aspects of knowledge.