Quotes by Alison Gopnik

Asking questions is what brains were born to do, at least when we were young children. For young children, quite literally, seeking explanations is as deeply rooted a drive as seeking food or water.

We decided to become developmental psychologists and study children because there arent any Martians. These brilliant beings with the little bodies and big heads are the closest we can get to a truly alien intelligence (even if we may occasionally suspect that they are bent on making us their slaves.)

We decided to become development psychologists and study children because there arent any Martians. These brilliant beings with the little bodies and big heads are the closest we can get to a truly alien intelligence (even if we may occasionally suspect that they are bent on making us their slaves.)

Im afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them.

The science can tell you that the thousands of pseudo-scientific parenting books out there - not to mention the Baby Einstein DVDs and the flash cards and the brain-boosting toys - wont do a thing to make your baby smarter. Thats largely because babies are already as smart as they can be smarter than we are in some ways.

Imagine if baseball were taught the way science is taught in most inner-city schools. Schoolchildren would get lectures about the history of the World Series. High school students would occasionally reproduce famous plays of the past. Nobody would get in the game themselves until graduate school.

Scientists and philosophers tend to treat knowledge, imagination and love as if they were all very separate parts of human nature. But when it comes to children, all three are deeply entwined. Children learn the truth by imagining all the ways the world could be, and testing those possibilities.

Knowing what to expect from a teacher is a really good thing, of course: It lets you get the right answers more quickly than you would otherwise.

We learn differently as children than as adults. For grown-ups, learning a new skill is painful, attention-demanding, and slow. Children learn unconsciously and effortlessly.

Young children seem to be learning who to share this toy with and figure out how it works, while adolescents seem to be exploring some very deep and profound questions: How should this society work? How should relationships among people work? The exploration is: Who am I, what am I doing?

Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental.

The youngest children have a great capacity for empathy and altruism. Theres a recent study that shows even 14-month-olds will climb across a bunch of cushions and go across a room to give you a pen if you drop one.

Texts and e-mails travel no faster than phone calls and telegrams, and their content isnt necessarily richer or poorer.

If you wanted to design a robot that could learn as well as it possibly could, you might end up with something that looked a lot like a 3-year-old.

Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. Its actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.

Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.