Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
What, of course, we want in a university is for people to learn the skills they're going to need outside the classroom.… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
One of the best ways of understanding human nature is to study children. After all, if we want understand who we are,… — 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
Developmental scientists like me explore the basic science of learning by designing controlled experiments. — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
I think universities are trying to figure out how we could use what we know about learning to change our education system,… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
Young children seem to be learning who to share this toy with and figure out how it works, while adolescents seem to… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
What makes knowledge automatic is what gets you to Carnegie Hall - practice, practice, practice. — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
