The goal of this pre-conference is to bring together a diverse group of researchers to discuss approaches to the study of conventionality in cognitive development. A number of developmental psychologists have begun to address the role of social conventions in guiding children’s developing competence in specific domains including: language, categorization, tool use, social roles, and play. Through presentations, and much time for discussion, we hope that we can compare and contrast across these content domains to home in on the common learning problem(s) posed by conventional knowledge. More generally, the goal of this meeting is to lay the foundation for an integrative framework characterizing the ways in which these rather diverse content domains might be related in cognitive development, and thus provide a unified approach to studying the ontogeny of conventional knowledge.