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How do babies come to know what babies know?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2024

David S. Moore*
Affiliation:
Psychology Field Group, Pitzer College, Claremont, CA, USA dmoore@pitzer.edu; http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/~dmoore/
David J. Lewkowicz
Affiliation:
Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA david.lewkowicz@yale.edu; https://medicine.yale.edu/childstudy/research/autism-and-neurodevelopment/llamb/
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

Elizabeth Spelke's What Babies Know is a scholarly presentation of core knowledge theory and a masterful compendium of empirical evidence that supports it. Unfortunately, Spelke's principal theoretical assumption is that core knowledge is simply the innate product of cognitive evolution. As such, her theory fails to explicate the developmental mechanisms underlying the emergence of the cognitive systems on which that knowledge depends.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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