Buying Options

Print List Price:	$16.99
Kindle Price:	$13.49 Save $3.50 (21%)
Sold by:	HarperCollins Publishers Price set by seller.

Promotions apply when you purchase

Add Audible narration to your purchase for just $7.49

Deliver to your Kindle Library

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

The Scientist In The Crib: Minds, Brains, And How Children Learn by [Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, Patricia K. Kuhl]

Follow the Authors

See all

Alison Gopnik

Andrew N. Meltzoff

The Scientist In The Crib: Minds, Brains, And How Children Learn Kindle Edition

by Alison Gopnik (Author), Andrew N. Meltzoff (Author), Patricia K. Kuhl (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

237 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$13.49

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$29.95

$25.60

$2.34

Paperback

"Please retry"

$16.99

$8.56

$0.97

Audio CD, MP3 Audio, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$27.29

—

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.

Print length

306 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

HarperCollins e-books
Publication date

October 13, 2009
File size

370 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

David J. Linden
24
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $2.99
Alison Gopnik
215
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $12.99
Alison Gopnik
434
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $11.99
Randy Cohen
78
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $11.99
Fredrik deBoer
132
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $14.99
James O. Prochaska
465
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $13.99

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This book is at once a masterful synthesis of the latest findings about the minds of children and a provacative argument that young children resemble practicing scientists. Few books about human development speak so eloquently to both scholars and parents.”

About the Author

Alison Gopnik, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and a leading cognitive scientist. She is past president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology and is the author of more than seventy papers on philosophy, psychology, and children's early learning. She has also written for The New York Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement. Mother of three, she lives with her family in Berkeley, California.

Andrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D. revolutionized the field of child psychology with his discoveries about how much infants know, learn, and remember. He is a professor of psychology and the University of Washington, and his research has been featured in Time, The New York Times, and museum exhibits worldwide. He and his wife, Dr. Kuhl, live with their daughter in Seattle, Washington.

Patricia K. Kuhl, Ph.D. is the world's leading authority on speech development and is a professor of speech and hearing at the University of Washington. She was one of six scientists invited to present their research at the White House Conference on Early Learning and the Brain in 1997. Her recent findings on language acquisition and why parents speak "motherese" to their children made national headlines. She and her husband, Dr. Meltzoff, live in Seattle. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

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

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From The Washington Post

"Meticulously researched, combining charm and erudition, humor and humanity, The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and How Children Learn...should be placed in the hands of teachers, social workers, therapists, policymakers, expectant parents and everyone else who cares about children. ...This book is full of enchanting revelations." --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

An informal and entertaining yet authoritative look at the science of babies minds. The three research psychologists, all of whom are parents, and two of whom, Meltzoff and Kuhl, are married to each other, write about child development as though they were speaking directly to parents they know. As their title indicates, the authors find parallels between babies and scientists: both, they say, formulate theories, make and test predictions, seek explanations, do experiments, and revise what they know based on new evidence. They show specifically how babies learn about people and objects, and how they acquire language. Their second analogy likens the babys brain to a biological computer designed by evolution and possessing at birth powerful programs ready to run. From the beginning, the infants brain is able to translate information from the world into representations that experience then enables it to modify into more complex and abstract representations. As babies interact with the world, they reprogram themselves with even more powerful and accurate programs. Everything a baby sees, hears, smells, tastes, or touches affects its brains wiring, and other peopleparents, siblings, caregiversnaturally and mostly unconsciously promote and influence these changes. The authors conclude that artificial interventions, such as using flash cards or classical music tapes to create a smarter baby are at best useless and at worst distractions from normal interactions. We do not, they say, need experts to tell us how to raise our children, but we are losing the time and the opportunity to do what parents have always doneexercise their innate ability to teach their children. Solutions to that problem, they caution, are best provided by a scientifically well-educated citizenry, hence the present work. An exceptionally readable and reassuring guide. (For a highly critical view of current interpretations of brain science, see John T. Bruers The Myth of the First Three Years, p. TKTK.) (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Library Journal

Babies solve problems in exactly the same way that scientists workAby repeatedly testing "hypotheses" against real occurrences, then modifying their initial theories to fit reality better. The three authorsAall parents as well as noted specialists in infant developmentAuse this idea to organize their summary of research on cognitive development in early childhood. Chapters cover the development of language, of understanding, and of minds and brains (the "software" and "hardware" of cognition). The authors do a good job of staying appropriately neutral on the big political issues of childcare and emphasize that this is not a book of child-rearing advice. It is instead a readable, concise summary of the recent explosion of research on early childhood development. Recommended for public and undergraduate libraries.AMary Ann Hughes, Neill P.L., Pullman, WA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

Gopnik and her coauthors are authorities on children's learning development and, in this book, at any rate, quite good writers. They present how children learn to understand and use language, control their emotions and arouse the emotions of others, and establish relationships. Babies are better at the elements and nuances of language than computers are, they show, for natural language far surpasses the artificial varieties. They demonstrate how science and messy reality intriguingly overlap in sections with such piquant titles as "The Three-Year-Old Opera: Love and Deception" and in such observations as "The babies' world isn't concrete any more than it's simple." They also willingly point out areas of development about which current understanding is fuzzy and more information is needed. Prospective and actual parents stand to learn much that may be helpful to them and their children from this lively book. William Beatty --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Although Gopnik, Meltzoff and Kuhl have each conducted groundbreaking research into the cognitive development of infants and its philosophical implications, this book evokes less excitement than their more straightforward research. With breathless enthusiasm, the authors review recent findings in developmental psychology and explain, in a tone somewhat self-consciously aimed at the "lay reader," their hopes that they will help answer fundamental philosophical questions. They focus on Kuhl's work in early infant phonetic recognition and language acquisition, Meltzoff's work on imitation in infants and Gopnik's exploration of philosophical development in infants, as well as other important work in the field. How do babies learn? they ask, answering that "they are born knowing a great deal, they learn more and we are designed to teach them." They also give refreshing emphasis to the evolutionary basis for infant-caregiver interactions. For example, they explain that "motherese"Athe high-pitched, slightly louder than normal speech with elongated and articulated consonants and vowelsAis not only preferred by babies but also optimally suited to their developing auditory systems. It's ironic, though, that these authors, who from the first pages decry ill-informed condescension to children, should be themselves so unthinkingly condescending in their tone and presentation: "children and scientists," they repeatedly aver, "are the best learners in the world." Agent, Katinka Matson, Brockman Inc.; 5-city author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00134XEU0
Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperCollins e-books; Reprint edition (October 13, 2009)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 13, 2009
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 370 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 306 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #253,082 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #61 in Child Psychology (Kindle Store)
- #121 in Adolescent Psychology (Kindle Store)
- #132 in Child Development

Customer Reviews:
237 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the authors

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Alison Gopnik
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. She received her BA from McGill University and her PhD. from Oxford University. Her honors include a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada University Research Fellowship, an Osher Visiting Scientist Fellowship at the Exploratorium, a Center for the Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences Fellowship, and a Moore Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology, and a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. She is an internationally recognized leader in the study of children's learning and development and was the first to argue that children's minds could help us understand deep philosophical questions. She was one of the founders of the study of "theory of mind", illuminating how children come to understand the minds of others, and she formulated the "theory theory", the idea that children learn in the same way that scientists do.
She is the author of over 100 articles and several books including "Words, thoughts and theories" (coauthored with Andrew Meltzoff), MIT Press, 1997, "The Scientist in the Crib" (coauthored with Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl) William Morrow, 1999, and "The Philosophical Baby; What children's minds tell us about love, truth and the meaning of life" Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009. "The Scientist in the Crib" was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, was translated into 20 languages and was enthusiastically reviewed in Science, The New Yorker, the Washington Post and The New York Review of Books (among others). She has also written for Science, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, New Scientist, and Slate.
She has spoken extensively on children's minds including speeches to political organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the Organization for Economic Development, children's advocacy organizations including Parents as Teachers and Zero to Three, museums including The Exploratorium, The Chicago Children's Museum, and the Bay Area Discovery Museum, and science organizations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The American Psychological Association, the Association of Psychological Science, and the American Philosophical Association. She has also appeared on many TV and radio programs. She has three sons and lives in Berkeley, California. For more see www.alisongopnik.com.
See more on the author's page
Andrew N. Meltzoff
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
See more on the author's page
Patricia Katherine Kuhl
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
See more on the author's page

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

237 global ratings

5 star		69%
4 star		15%
3 star		10%
2 star		1%
1 star		5%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

ALMK

Good science at the layperson's level

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 16, 2012

Verified Purchase

Several chapters of this book were required reading in a cognitive development class I took as a PhD student. I ended up reading the rest of the book while I was pregnant a year later. I love the authors, as I feel they write well and are some of the leaders in their field. The book is a little repetitive, but their style keeps it from sounding like a textbook, and conveys the wonder and appreciation the researchers have for their work.

Several people gave this book one star, complaining essentially that it wasn't a how-to book to tell them how to make their babies smarter. Besides the obvious advice of paying attention to your children and reading them a book now and then, what this research shows is that what we do as parents has been wired into us for the maximal development of our children. There aren't any books out there that you can read which give you a plan for making your child smarter, and if they're telling you that, they're wrong.

I feel this book establishes a good frame of reference for understanding where an infant's brain starts out in its development from a fussing ball of arms and legs to something that approximates a human adult in logic and emotion. Many people doubtless still believe that infants come into the world a blank slate, with no knowledge or strategies for learning, and the research presented in this book shows us that's just not so. I recommend this book to any of my pregnant friends who I feel might be interested in gaining a glimpse of the amazing development that's happening inside their baby's brain.

25 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kindle Customer

A Great Intro to Baby's Developmental Psychology

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 12, 2002

Verified Purchase

As the father of a nine month old boy, I have been enthralled with this book. It is not a "how to" book on helping your child learn, but rather is a readable introduction to the current state of the study of cognitive development of babies. If you don't believe that it is possible to know what a baby is thinking, you will be fascinated at the clever experiments that have been constructed to tease out information from a baby's brain. It is surprising who much we can find out about how babies' brains work, and how much that can teach us about the adult human brain.
The tone of the book is chatty, but the content is substantial. The authors discuss the philosophers as well as the scientists who are working in this area. I don't suppose that the average new parent is interested in wading into Chomsky, Ryle or Descartes, but this book actually makes it interesting and compelling.
The book is broken down into the acquisition of particular mental skills. The authors thesis is that babies learn using, more or less, the scientific method, forming hypotheses and then testing them emperically. (The title of the book is a clever word play, referring to this theory, while simultaneously demonstrating what adult scientists are learning from their empirical studies.) While this may seem pretensious, the authors actually make a pretty good case for this theory.
The acquisition of language deviates somewhat from this general theoretical method, but the authors have some fascinating experimental data to illustrate the way babies actually learn language.
In short, this book is highly recommended, not just to new parents, but also to anyone interested in childhood cognitive development or what can be known about the workings of the human brain.

29 people found this helpful

Helpful

audrey frances

A great resource for parents and teachers

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 11, 2001

Verified Purchase

This book presents the latest research concerning child development, but does so in an accessible and friendly way. This is not a how-to book, rather containing information about how children learn and develop over time. Chapters include: What Children Learn About People; What Children Learn About Things; What Children Learn About Language; What Scientists Have Learned About Children's Minds; What Scientists Have Learned About Children's Brains.

To a small extent the book suffers from the usual dilutory effects of having multiple authors. They also try to be a bit too cute sometimes, but this does not overly detract from the book's success as a layman-friendly introduction to child development research.

There is a very useful Notes section, References, and a good Index.

My advice, for all it's worth: If you are going to get one book about child development research, get Lise Eliot's 'What's Going On In There?', which is less precious, more extensive, and better organized. If you are going to get two books, add this to your list. I find myself referring back to the former book fairly often, but I do browse through this one occasionally as well.

85 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jen

Worth reading

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 13, 2007

Verified Purchase

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.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

rzl

It’s not a manual:

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 30, 2020

Verified Purchase

Well-informed, witty, sometimes too wordy for my taste, descriptive and easy to read, this book presents the “state of the art” of developmental psychology to a layperson. It will not give you direct advice on what to do and what not to do with your baby, and by the time you’re finished reading you’ll know why. The fact that she really loves her job also shines through, something that maybe wasn’t intentional but I really appreciated it.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Paladin

Informative and enjoyable!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 9, 2016

Verified Purchase

Very likely the most informative and entertaining book ever written on this subject. By the way, the "scientist" in the crib is the infant, not some Ph.D. bent over the crib observing!

2 people found this helpful

KDO

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 25, 2018

Verified Purchase

Good read,

Paola

Great read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 12, 2019

Verified Purchase

Love all the anecdotes that exemplify the different stages of development. I recommend this book to any new or soon to be new parent.

Daniel Karczewski

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 15, 2016

Verified Purchase

Arrived as described. Thank you.

di.ana

Great present for a new parent

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 17, 2020

Verified Purchase

I bought this book for my friend, a new dad. The book was perfect for explaining development in an accessible way. He really liked the explanations and the simple developmental tests he could try at home as his baby grew.

Buying Options

Buy for others

Buying and sending eBooks to others

Follow the Authors

The Scientist In The Crib: Minds, Brains, And How Children Learn Kindle Edition

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Amazon.com Review

From The Washington Post

From Kirkus Reviews

From Library Journal

From Booklist

From Publishers Weekly

Product details

Videos

About the authors

Alison Gopnik

Andrew N. Meltzoff

Patricia Katherine Kuhl

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries