Infant and Early Childhood Cognition

3-0-9 units. HASS-S · Undergraduate

Introduction to cognitive development focusing on childrens' understanding of objects, agents, and causality. Develops a critical understanding of experimental design. Discusses how developmental research might address philosophical questions about the origins of knowledge, appearance and reality, and the problem of other minds. Provides instruction and practice in written communication as necessary to research in cognitive science (including critical reviews of journal papers, a literature review and an original research proposal), as well as instruction and practice in oral communication in the form of a poster presentation of a journal paper.

Fall 2012

This course is an introduction to cognitive development focusing on children's understanding of objects, agents, and causality. It develops a critical understanding of experimental design. The course discusses how developmental research might address philosophical questions about the origins of knowledge, appearance and reality, and the problem of other minds. It provides instruction and practice in written communication as needed for cognitive science research (including critical reviews of journal papers, a literature review and an original research proposal), as well as instruction and practice in oral communication in the form of a poster presentation of a journal paper.

Readings

Piaget, Jean. “Piaget’s Theory.” In Childhood Cognitive Development: The Essential Readings . Edited by Kang Lee. Wiley-Blackwell, 2000, pp. 31–47. ISBN: 9780631216568.
Listed reading
Flavell, John H. The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget . With a foreword by Jean Piaget . Van Nostrand Reinhold Inc., 1963, pp. 51–71. ISBN: 9780442024130.
Listed reading
Buy at MIT Press Gopnik, Alison M., and Andrew N. Meltzoff. “The Scientist as Child.” In Words, Thoughts, and Theories . The MIT Press, 1996, pp. 13–47. ISBN: 9780262071758. ↗
Listed reading
Chomsky, Noam, and Jerry Fodor. “The Inductivist Fallacy.” In Language and Learning: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky . Edited by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. Harvard University Press, 1980, pp. 255–75. ISBN: 9780674509412.
Listed reading
Flavell, John H., Patricia H. Miller, and Scott A. Miller. “Infant Cognition.” In Cognitive Development . 4th ed. Pearson, 2001, pp. 29–62. ISBN: 9780137915750.
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Lewkowicz, David J., and Asif A. Ghazanfar. “ The Emergence of Multisensory Systems through Perceptual Narrowing .” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13, no. 11 (2009): 470–8. ↗
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Meltzoff, Andrew N., and Richard W. Borton. “ Intermodal Matching by Human Neonates .” Nature 282 (1979): 403–4. ↗
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Xu, Fei. “ Sortal Concepts, Object Individuation, and Language .” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, no. 9 (2007): 400–6. ↗
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Spelke, Elizabeth S., Karen Breinlinger, et al. “Origins of Knowledge.” (PDF - 5.9MB) Psychological Review 99, no. 4 (1992): 605–32. ↗
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Wynn, Karen. “ Addition and Subtraction by Human Infants .” Nature 358 (1992): 749–50. ↗
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McCrink, Koleen, and Karen Wynn. “ Large-number Addition and Subtraction by 9-Month-Old Infants .” Psychological Science 15, no. 11 (2004): 776–81. ↗
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Feigenson, Lisa, Stanislas Dehaene, et al. “ Core Systems of Number .” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8, no. 7 (2004): 307–14. ↗
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Kushnir, Tamar, Fei Xu, et al. “ Young Children Use Statistical Sampling to Infer the Preferences of Other People .” Psychological Science 21, no. 8 (2010): 1134–40. ↗
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Xu, Fei, and Vashti Garcia. “ Intuitive Statistics by 8-Month-Old Infants .” PNAS 105, no. 13 (2008): 5012–5. ↗
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Téglás, Ernő, Edward Vul, et al. “ Pure Reasoning in 12-Month-Old Infants as Probabilistic Inference .” Science 332, no. 6033 (2011): 1054–9. ↗
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SES #: 17* · TOPICS: Concepts · READINGS: Gelman, Susan A., and Henry M. Wellman. “ Insides and Essences: Early Understandings of the Non-obvious .” Cognition 38, no. 3 (1991): 213–44. ↗
Reading assignment
Carey, Susan. “Some Preliminaries.” Chapter 1 in The Origins of Concepts . Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780199838806. [Preview with Google Books ] ↗
Listed reading
Schulz, Laura. “ The Origins of Inquiry: Inductive Inference and Exploration in Early Childhood. ” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16, no. 7 (2012): 382–9. ↗
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Saxe, R., and S. Carey. “ The Perception of Causality in Infancy .” Acta Psychologica 123, no. 1–2 (2006): 144–65. ↗
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Gergely, György, and Gergely Csibra. “ Teleologial Reasoning in Infancy: The Naïve Theory of Rational Action .” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7, no. 7 (2003): 287–92. ↗
Listed reading
Buy at MIT Press Woodward, Amanda L., Jessica A. Sommerville, and José J. Guajardo. “How Infants make Sense of Intentional Action.” In Intentions and Intentionality: Foundations of Social Cognition . Edited by Bertram F. Malle, Louis J. Moses, and Dare A. Baldwin. The MIT Press, 2001, pp. 149–69. ISBN: 9780262133869. [Preview with Google Books ] ↗
Listed reading
Baillargeon, Renée, Rose M. Scott, et al. “ False-belief Understanding in Infants .” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14 , no. 3 (2010): 110–8. ↗
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Wellman, Henry M., David Cross, et al. “ Meta-analysis of Theory of Mind Development: The Truth about False Belief .” Child Development 72, no. 3 (2001): 655–84. ↗
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Gopnik, Alison. “ How we know our Minds: The Illusion of First-person Knowledge of Intentionality .” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no. 1 (1993): 1–14. ↗
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Elsabbagh, Mayada, and Mark H. Johnson. “ Getting Answers from Babies about Autism .” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14, no. 2 (2010): 81–7. ↗
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Senju, Atsushi, Victoria Southgate, et al. “ Mindblind Eyes: An Absence of Spontaneous Theory of Mind in Asperger Syndrome .” Science 325, no. 5942 (2009): 883–5. ↗
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Waxman, Sandra R., and Susan A. Gelman. “ Early Word Learning Entails Reference, not Merely Associations .” Trends in Cognitive Science 13, no. 6 (2009): 258–63. ↗
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Smith, Linda B., Susan S. Jones, et al. “ Object Name Learning Provides On-The-Job Training for Attention .” Psychological Science 13, no. 1 (2002): 13–9. ↗
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Xu, Fei, and Joshua B. Tenenbaum. “ Sensitivity to Sampling in Bayesian Word Learning .” Developmental Science 10, no. 3 (2007): 288–97. ↗
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Cattell, Ray. “Do We Teach Children to Speak?” Chapter 3 in Children’s Language: Consensus and Controversy . Cassell Academic, 2000, pp. 30–43. ISBN: 9780304706815.
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———. “Do We Help Children to Speak?” Chapter 7 in Children’s Language: Consensus and Controversy . Cassell Academic, 2000, pp. 104–28. ISBN: 9780304706815.
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Gertner, Yael, Cynthia Fisher, et al. “ Learning Words and Rules: Abstract Knowledge of Word Order in Early Sentence Comprehension .” Psychological Science 17, no. 8 (2006): 684–91. ↗
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Killena, Melanie, Kelly Lynn Mulveya, et al. “ The Accidental Transgressor: Morally-relevant Theory of Mind .” Cognition 119, no. 2 (2011): 197–215. ↗
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Hamlin, J. Kiley, Karen Wynn, et al. “ Social Evaluation by Preverbal Infants .” Nature 450 (2007): 557–9. ↗
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Taylor, Marjorie, Bridget S. Cartwright, et al. “ A Developmental Investigation of Children’s Imaginary Companions .” Developmental Psychology 29, no. 2 (1993): 276–85. ↗
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Buchsbaum, Daphna, Sophie Bridgers, et al. “ The Power of Possibility: Casual Learning, Counterfactual Reasoning, and Pretend Play .” Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society B 367, no. 1599 (2012): 2202–12. ↗
Listed reading

Prerequisites & course information

Prereq: 9.00 U (Fall) 3-0-9 units. HASS-S

Sources

Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2012
MIT OCW syllabus ↗
MIT OCW readings ↗
Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.