Most of the chapters included in this volume have first been presented at two conference symposia, one organized for the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development that took place in Minneapolis in April 2001 and the other organized for the Xth European Conference on Developmental Psychology that took place in Uppsala, Sweden, in August 2001. Both of these symposia focused on the nature of cognitive developmental change from a number of different perspectives and were dedicated to the memory of the late Robbie Case who died suddenly a year earlier in Toronto. As organizers of these symposia and editors of this volume we are grateful to all of our contributors for their participation in this project, and for their cooperation in the long and cumbersome process of the editing of the chapters in their present form. We are also grateful to the University of Cyprus for the financial support that made possible both our participation in the two symposia above and the preparation of the volume itself.

The book is dedicated to the memory of Robbie Case, an inspired, original, and deep developmental thinker whose work has widened our understanding of cognitive development and has opened new conceptual and methodological roads in developmental cognitive science. His untimely death at the age of fifty-six deprived the field of an incisive forward looking mind at the peak of his personal and epistemic maturity and his family and friends of his warm and always enriching presence.