“Literature is the equivalent of the climate scientist’s computer simulations: set up some new starting conditions, run the whole complicated process and… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
I'm culturally Jewish but, like most scientists, an atheist: I don't believe there's a God or supernatural world. Buddhism offers guidance on… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
Overall, female scientists have fewer resources than male scientists, just as poor people have less access to health care. But if you… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
Many philosophers say it's impossible to explain our conscious experience in scientific, biological terms at all. But that's not exactly true. Scientists… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
The science can tell you that the thousands of pseudo-scientific parenting books out there - not to mention the 'Baby Einstein' DVDs… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
The best scientific way to discover if one factor influences another is to do a controlled experiment. — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
Developmental scientists like me explore the basic science of learning by designing controlled experiments. — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing, — 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
Scientists learn about the world in three ways: They analyze statistical patterns in the data, they do experiments, and they learn from… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
Imagine if baseball were taught the way science is taught in most inner-city schools. Schoolchildren would get lectures about the history of… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
The real excitement is collaborating with computer scientists and neuroscientists and starting to understand in detail how children learn so much so… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
Scientists and philosophers tend to treat knowledge, imagination and love as if they were all very separate parts of human nature. But… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
If you just, pretty much, take a random 15-month-old, just sit and watch them for 10 minutes and count out how many… — Alison Gopnik Copy Share Image
“It’s not that children are little scientists — it’s that scientists are big children. Scientists actually are the few people who as… — 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
