Although debates continue, studies of cognition in infancy suggest that knowledge begins to
emerge early in life and constitutes part of humans' innate endowment. Early-developing …

What aspects of knowledge emerge in children prior to their first contacts with the objects of
their knowledge, and what aspects emerge through the shaping effects of experience with …

There is a broad consensus that learning requires the support of innate representations (cf.
Carey and Gelman 1991, Hirschfeld and Gelman 1994, Johnson and Morton 1992, but see …

Compex cognitive skills such as reading and calculation and complex cognitive
achievements such as formal science and mathematics may depend on a set of building …

How do humans build the rich and intricate systems of knowledge that are characteristic of
our species? How variable are these knowledge systems across human cultures, and what …

Noting that beyond the individual variations among humans, there is a body of mental
abilities common to every human being, this book examines the debate among researchers …

What do infants know? How does the knowledge that they begin with prepare them for
learning about the particular physical, cultural, and social world in which they live? Answers …

Questions about how our knowledge changes in response to experience lie at the heart of
efforts to understand cognitive development. In this chapter, I approach these questions from …

The struggle between characterizing the mental processes of infants as more adult-like than
previously thought, while depending on methods that are idiosyncratic to infant research is a …

In this chapter, we consider children's early understanding of physical, biological, and
psychological phenomena. We ask whether--and if so, when and in what fashion--these …