Alison Gopnik
Alison Gopnik
Alison Gopnikis an American professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. She is known for her work in the areas of cognitive and language development, specializing in the effect of language on thought, the development of a theory of mind, and causal learning. Her writing on psychology and cognitive science has appeared in Science, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, New Scientist, Slate and others...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPsychologist
Date of Birth16 June 1955
CountryUnited States of America
One of the things I say is from an evolutionary point of view: probably the ideal rich environment for a baby includes more mud, livestock, and relatives than most of us could tolerate nowadays.
Our babies are like penguins; penguin babies can't exist unless more than one person is taking care of them. They just can't keep going.
Something like reading depends a lot on just having people around you who talk to you and read you books, more than sitting down and, say, doing a reading drill when you're 3 or 4 years old.
Children have a very good idea of how to distinguish between fantasies and realities. It's just they are equally interested in exploring both.
What makes knowledge automatic is what gets you to Carnegie Hall - practice, practice, practice.
We learn differently as children than as adults. For grown-ups, learning a new skill is painful, attention-demanding, and slow. Children learn unconsciously and effortlessly.
I'm afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them.
What's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double espressos.
Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. It's actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.
Scientists learn about the world in three ways: They analyze statistical patterns in the data, they do experiments, and they learn from the data and ideas of other scientists. The recent studies show that children also learn in these ways.
Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental.
Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific - this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions.
What teenagers want most of all are social rewards, especially the respect of their peers.
The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either.