Scientist in the cradle

Author: (USA) Gopnik / Meltzoff / Kuhl / Yuan Ailing / Liao Li / Ren Zhiguo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: This book is a clever combination of the new discoveries of children's minds and the provocative view that children are like scientists at work. Few books on human development can be as vivid, making it suitable for both scholars and parents to understand and read. How do young children perceive the world? What is the connection between infants in cribs and scientists? We believe that after reading this book, readers will gain new insights into the potential of children's cognitive development, which goes beyond our previous imagination. This is a crucial part of cognitive science. The book argues that scientists and young children share certain similarities in exploring the world, with smooth and engaging writing. We believe that parents who deeply love their children and child educators will find it interesting and gain many valuable insights. Scientists and cribs? We wrote this book to illustrate that scientists and infants in cribs share common characteristics. Over the past 30 years, scientists—just like us—have been observing infants in cribs—infants in cribs, in childcare centers, and preschoolers. Hundreds of rigorous scientific studies have told us how infants and young children think and learn. These studies include research on the nature of human thought and the brain. They have also helped us answer profound and ancient philosophical questions. Through observing infants and young children in cribs and childcare centers, we have learned as much as we have through covered culture dishes and telescopes, and to some extent, even more—we have learned the meaning of becoming a person. In this book, we tell the story of the new science of children's minds. This story should be important for anyone interested in intelligence and the brain. It is a central part of the new discipline of cognitive science. Cognitive science combines psychology, philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and neuroscience. New scientific insights often come from unexpected and even seemingly insignificant places, and some of the most important insights in cognitive science come from cribs and childcare centers. Understanding children can help us understand ourselves in a new way. Scientists and children share certain common characteristics to some extent. New research shows that infants and young children know and understand more than we previously thought. They think, draw conclusions, make predictions, seek explanations, and even conduct experiments. Scientists and children belong to the same part because they are both the best learners in the universe. This means that ordinary adults also have a more powerful learning ability than we previously thought. After all, adults grow from children and have the potential to become scientists.