Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
We learn differently as children than as adults. For grown-ups, learning a new skill is painful, attention-demanding, and slow. Children learn unconsciously… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
If you just casually look at a baby, it doesn't look like there's very much going on there, but they know more… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
Even the very youngest children already are perfectly able to discriminate between the imaginary and the real, whether in books or movies… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
Siblings are the guarantors that the private childhood world - so unlike the adult world that scientists are only just beginning to… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
As adults, when we attend to something in the world we are vividly conscious of that particular thing, and we shut out… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
If you just got enough expertise and enough special techniques and read up enough, then you could shape a child into the… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
Successful creative adults seem to combine the wide-ranging exploration and openness we see in children with the focus and discipline we see… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
Philosophers and psychologists have long puzzled over the question of how we know as much as we do despite our limited experiences. One way… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
Adults tend to think they have much free will. Kids younger than six are less sure. They may be more realistic! — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
From an evolutionary perspective children are, literally, designed to learn. Childhood is a special period of protected immaturity. It gives the young breathing time… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
There is a tension between our desire to get our kids to turn out a particular way versus letting them develop to be their… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
“Instead, it may be that experience itself has changed our brains so that we perceive and interpret the world in a certain way. Once… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
Caring for children has always been one of the deepest and most satisfying things that a human being does, and yet it is hard… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
Imaginary friends are one of the weirder forms of pretend play in childhood. But the research shows that imaginary friends actually help children understand… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
“Like their parents, the Korean children used more verbs than the English-speaking kids, while the English-speaking kids used more nouns. But in addition, the… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
“We decided to become development psychologists and study children because there aren't any Martians. These brilliant beings with the little bodies and big heads… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
Each new generation of children grows up in the new environment its parents have created, and each generation of brains becomes wired in a… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
I'm the oldest of six children and I had my own first baby when I was 23. So I've always been interested in babies,… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
“Literature is the equivalent of the climate scientist’s computer simulations: set up some new starting conditions, run the whole complicated process and see what… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
The brain knows the real secret of seduction, more effective than even music and martinis. Just keep whispering, 'Gee, you are really special' to… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share
