Beyond Modularity

Karmiloff-Smith, A. Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science. MIT Press. November, 1992.

Summary:

Piaget's child development theory describes how children develop when their minds mature with age. He observed transitions and major events when this occurs, such as when children learn object permanence.

Karmiloff-Smith presents research challenging the assumption that growth happens in such steps. Instead, the author shows how many human functions (language, math, physics, drawing) are innate in very young children even before they are verbal. For instance, infants look longer at images that even humans would consider novel (such as objects that do not obey a perceived grouping, p. 68).

Discussion:

This book was really well-written and I enjoyed the break from regular computer science reading to read an almost pure psychology book. The idea that drawing is innate in humans is reaffirms our lab's claim that sketching is "natural and intuitive".