How Babies Think

The Science Of Childhood.

Learning begins in the first days of life. Scientists are now discovering how young children develop emotionally and intellectually, and are beginning to realise that already from birth babies know a staggering amount about the world around them.

In 'How Babies Think', the first book if its kind for popular audience, three leading experts on the science of infant minds draw on twenty-five years of research in philosophy, psychology, computer science, linguistics and neuroscience to reveal what babies know and how they learn it. In particular, they reveal the evolutionary tendencies, pre-programmed skills and environmental influences that enable babies to learn, see, move, manipulate objects and speak. What's more, the authors come to the remarkable conclusion that in learning to perceive, think about and control their surroundings, young children are acting just like scientists who acquire knowledge by revising their theories in the light of accumulating counter-evidence.

This brilliant work of synthesis will fascinate and inform not just parents but anyone who was once a baby themselves - in other words, all of us - and shows how, as the familiar saying goes, "the child is father of the man".