Content area
Full Text
THE SCIENTIST IN THE CRIB - Minds, Brains, and How Children Learn
GOPNIK, A., MELTZOFF, A. N., & KUHL, P.KL, (1999).
New York, NY: William Morrow & Company, Inc.
The Scientist in the Crib is an engaging look at the relatively new and rapidly growing field of cognitive developmental psychology, and more specifically, infant mind/brain development. Three prominent researchers share the latest studies on infant minds. The ingenious research methods as well as the findings themselves are intriguing. In one study young babies suck pacifiers to turn on an audiotape. Researchers discover which tapes the babies are willing to work for-their own mother's voice, for example, over a stranger's.
The book begins with a discussion of the birth (revival, really) of developmental psychology. Until the 1970s, scientific consensus was there was no point to studying infants as, it was widely believed, babies couldn't think. Even Piaget believed that newborns were no more than reflexive. But recently, researchers have begun to conduct experiments that give evidence that babies not only do think, but how they do so, how they take in raw sensory data and transform it into understanding. The authors make a number of interesting comparisons to explain cognitive developmental psychology, including likening...