The book tells you how 0-3-year olds operate like scientists to learn about the world. It tells you how they gradually come to learn that other people have minds similar but also independent from their own, the physics of the world, and the nuances of language. The authors argue that adults are as mature as we are today because we retain the scientific inquiry capabilities that we had possessed since infancy. I loved the first four chapters of the book, but found the latter three chapters to be repeating what was already stated prior. The writing is clever. ( )

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 fascinating insights about our adult capacities and how even very young children -- as well as adults -- use some of the same methods that allow scientists to learn so much about the world. Filled with surprises 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.

Another book about babies. This one is thankfully free of gory details. Instead The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and How Children Learn by Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, & Patricia K. Kuhl examines developmental psychology in children. It turns out that babies are a lot like scientists in the ways they interact with their new world and test assumptions. Or maybe scientists are like babies because it is in our earliest years that we first develop our capacity for learning.

The authors examine how babies recognize other people and themselves, differentiate objects, and develop language. They also have instinctive means to train adults and older children to help in their development. This book is a lot of fun and a fascinating read.

Favorite Passages:
It may be some comfort to know that these toddlers don't really want to drive us crazy, they just want to understand how we work. The tears that follow the blowup at the end of a terrible-twos confrontation are genuine. The terrible twos reflects a genuine clash between children's need to understand other people and their need to live happily with them. Experimenting with conflict may be necessary if you want to understand what people will do, but it's also dangerous. The terrible twos show how powerful and deep-seated the learning drive is in these young children. With these two-year olds, as with scientists, finding the truth is more than a profession -- it's a passion. And, as with scientists, that passion may sometimes make them sacrifice domestic happiness. - p. 38.

The two most successful examples of human learning turn out to be quite similar. Children and scientists are the best learners in the world, and they both operate in very similar, even identical ways, ways that are unlike even our best computers. They never start from scratch; instead, they modify and change what they already know to gain new knowledge. But they are also never permanently dogmatic -- the things they know (or think they know) are always open to further revision.

While the idea that scientists are like children might seem surprising at first, it helps make sense of some otherwise puzzling facts. Scientists, after all, have the same brains as the rest of us. And science is convincing because, at some level, all of us can recognize the value of explaining what goes on around us and predicting what will happen in the future. ... Why would we have such powerful learning abilities if we never even used them back in the Pleistocene? ...

Our answer is that these abilities evolved for the use of babies and young children. - p. 156-7
Reviews:
BrainConnection by Anne Pycha

NEA by
Marcia D'Arcangelo and Andrew Meltzoff.
Science Blog ( )

I read this during the first year of my daughter's life and found it fascinating and insightful. Good science, written well. ( )

I'm not sure if I'm giving this book four stars because it genuinely deserves it, or if the high rating is perhaps more emblematic of my disgust for a majority of the childhood development books I've come across.

Regardless, four stars.

Where many books seem long on theory and short on empiricism, these authors take great pains (and supply fine footnotes) to document the fruit of modern childhood development studies. My only gripe about the book is that I'd still like a more in depth recounting of current research. Fortunately, most of the authors' peer journal submissions can be found online. ( )