Alison Gopnik

Patricia K. Kuhl

Andrew N. Meltzoff

What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind

The Scientist in the Crib

This exciting book by three pioneers in the new field of cognitive science discusses important discoveries about how much babies and young children know and learn, and how much parents naturally teach them.It argues that evolution designed us both to teach and learn, and that the drive to learn is our most important instinct. It also reveals as fascinating insights about our adult capacities and how even young children -- as well as adults -- use some of the same methods that allow scientists to learn so much about the world. Filled with surprise at every turn, this vivid, lucid, and often funny book gives us a new view of the inner life of children and the mysteries of the mind.

Minds, Brains, And How Children Learn

The Scientist In The Crib

This book combines two worlds -- children and science -- in an entirely unique way that yields exciting discoveries about both. The authors show that by the time children are three, they've solved problems that stumped Socrates with an agility computers still can't match. The Scientist in the Crib explains just how, and how much, babies and young children know and learn, and how much parents naturally teach them. In fact, The Scientist in the Crib argues that evolution designed us to both teach and learn. Nurture is our nature, and the drive to learn is our most important instinct. The new science of children also reveals insights about our adult capacities, helping to solve some ancient questions: How do we know there really is a world out there? How do we know that other people have minds like ours? It turns out that we find solutions to these problems when we are very small. But these astonishing capabilities don't disappear in later life, as the authors show in their engaging discussion of humans' potential for learning. In fact, they argue that even very young children -- as well as adults use some of the same methods that allow scientists to learn so much about the world. Written by three top scientists -- themselves parents -- who conducted much of the pioneering research in this field, The Scientist in the Crib is vivid, lucid, and often funny. Filled with surprises at every turn, it gives us a new view of the inner life of children and the mysteries of the mind.

Jeffrey S. Rosenschein

Words, Thoughts, and Theories

This text articulates and defends the 'theory theory' of cognitive and semantic development, the idea that infants and young children, like scientists, learn about the world by forming and revising theories.

Wolfgang Prinz

Imitation guides the behaviour of a range of species. Scientific advances in the study of imitation at multiple levels from neurons to behaviour have far-reaching implications for cognitive science, neuroscience, and evolutionary and developmental psychology. This volume, first published in 2002, provides a summary of the research on imitation in both Europe and America, including work on infants, adults, and nonhuman primates, with speculations about robotics. A special feature of the book is that it provides a concrete instance of the links between developmental psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. It showcases how an interdisciplinary approach to imitation can illuminate long-standing problems in the brain sciences, including consciousness, self, perception-action coding, theory of mind, and intersubjectivity. The book addresses what it means to be human and how we get that way.

Development, Evolution and Brain Bases

The Imitative Mind

Patricia Katherine Kuhl

Learning begins in the first days of life. Scientists are now discovering how young children develop emotionally and intellectually, and are beginning to realize that from birth babies already know a staggering amount about the world around them. In the first book of its kind for a popular audience, three leading US scientists draw on twenty-five years of research in philosophy, psychology, computer science, linguistics and neuroscience to reveal what babies know and how they learn it.

Andrew N. Meltzoff

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