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
Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing,
On the Web we all become small-town visitors lost in the big city.
The youngest children have a great capacity for empathy and altruism. There's a recent study that shows even 14-month-olds will climb across a bunch of cushions and go across a room to give you a pen if you drop one.
What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness.
If parents are the fixed stars in the childs universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.
Developmental scientists like me explore the basic science of learning by designing controlled experiments.
One of the most distinctive evolutionary features of human beings is our unusually long, protected childhood.
Texts and e-mails travel no faster than phone calls and telegrams, and their content isn't necessarily richer or poorer.
It's turns out to be much easier to simulate a grandmaster chess player than it is to simulate a 2-year-old.
The largest and most powerful computers are still no match for the smallest and weakest humans.
Owning our past allows us to own our future.
The best scientific way to discover if one factor influences another is to do a controlled experiment.
Ineffective or weak brain connections are pruned in much the same way a gardener would prune a tree or bush, giving the plant a desired shape,
The brain knows the real secret of seduction, more effective than even music and martinis. Just keep whispering, 'Gee, you are really special' to that sack of water and protein that is a body, and you can get it to do practically anything.