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THE THERAPIST PSYCHOLOGIST BOOK STORE
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The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind By Alison GopnikAndrew N. MeltzoffPatricia K. Kuhl ( Harper Paperbacks )
Release Date: 2001-01-01
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $14.95
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Product Description
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.
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Amazon.com Review
A trio of nationally respected childhood-development scientists hailing from Berkeley and the University of Washington has authored The Scientist in the Crib to correct a disparity: while popular books about science speak to intelligent, perceptive adults who simply want to learn, books about babies typically just give advice, heavy on the how-to and light on the why. The authors write, "It's as if the only place you could read about evolution was in dog-breeding manuals, not in Stephen Jay Gould; as if, lacking Stephen Hawking's insights, the layman's knowledge of the cosmos was reduced to 'How to find the constellations.'" The Scientist in the Crib changes that. Standing on the relatively recent achievements of the young field of cognitive science (pointing out that not so long ago, babies were considered only slightly animate vegetables--"carrots that could cry"), the authors succinctly and articulately sum up the state of what's now known about children's minds and how they learn. Using language that's both friendly and smart (and using equally accessible metaphors, everything from Scooby-Doo to The Third Man), The Scientist in the Crib explores how babies recognize and understand their fellow humans, interpret sensory input, absorb language, learn and devise theories, and take part in building their own brains. Such science makes for great reading, but will likely prove even more useful to readers with a scientist in their own crib, acting as tonic to pseudoscientific how-to baby books that recommend everything "from flash cards, to Mozart tapes, to Better Baby Institutes." As the authors put it, "We want to understand children, not renovate them." --Paul Hughes
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 Babies ready to speak any language ( pakrame1 )
This book wasn't as interesting as I hoped it would be, but I loved the chapter on language. It was fascinating to read that when babies initially begin to babble, they are able to differentiate all spoken sounds. Then the culture they are living in exerts its influence.
"Once babies reach the babbling milestone, the universal phase of language production ends. Babies from different cultures, learning different languages, start to make the distinctive noises of their own community sometime between a year and a year and a half. The Chinese baby starts to babble in a way that sounds Chinese. She uses very rapid pitch changes just like adult Chinese speakers. Swedish babies babble in a way that sounds distinctly Swedish, using the rising intonation patterns typical of adult speakers of Swedish."
The research described in this book gave good reasons why I am constantly amazed every time I spend time with my grandsons.
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 Thoroughly enjoyable and informative ( kgrif )
An extremely readable overview of infant developmental psychology, this book provides fascinating details of the last thirty years of research on infant minds. The basic organization around three classic problems in epistemology (Other Minds, External Objects, and Language) will particularly appeal to those who took a few philosophy classes in college, but no background in either philosophy or science is necessary to understand and appreciate the work. Much of the book is devoted to summarizing various experiments, with the typical structure being: "If you show a three-month old X, she will do Y, but if you show a six-month-old the same X, he will do Z. Therefore we know that babies learn Z during this time period."
Several other reviewers have compared The Scientist in the Crib to Lise Eliot's What's Going On In There?, and having read both, I would characterize the difference as follows: The Scientist in the Crib is easily accessible to all readers but does not give much biological information about the brain. What's Going On In There? offers much more detail about neurology, but requires substantially more effort on the reader's part.
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Worth reading
This book is definitely not the most well-formulated book I've ever read, but parts of it are really worth the time to read. The first half gives information from research they do with babies, which was absolutely fascinating. In the second half, the chapter on babies' brains was interesting, but the rest of it was kind of a waste of paper, especially the last chapter.
The authors are obsessed with scientists (they continuously refer to them as though they are the gods of earth basically), sex (they have pointless sex comments throughout the first half of the book), and evolution (it seems as though after they wrote each chapter, they went back and said, "Where are four places we can comment about evolution in this chapter?"). Those aspects of the book distract from the focus of learning about how babies and young children think.
Overall, I think this is a definite book to at least check out from the library if you're a parent of a young child or if you work with young children.
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at least 6 stars
the most amaizing and surprising book, written
with humour and love ; as a physical therapist i am working with small babies,
i recommend this book to everybody who has a baby or works with
them.
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 Dull and not what i expected
Too much filler, not enough actual content regarding how babies learn and how their brain and minds develop. I found this book boring, repetitive and slow- a real disappointment.
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Addiction
