Overview

We acquire concepts such as ""atom,"" ""force,"" ""integer,"" and ""democracy"" long after we are born; these concepts are not part of the initial cognitive state of human beings. Other concepts like ""object,"" ""cause,"" or ""agent"" may be present early in infancy--if not innately. Processes of change occur throughout our conceptual development, which prompts two key questions: Which human concepts constitute innate, core knowledge? How do humans acquire new concepts, and how do these concepts change in development?Core Knowledge and Conceptual Change provides a unique theoretical and empirical introduction to the study of conceptual development, documenting key advances in case studies, including ground-breaking science on human representations of language, objects, number, events, color, space, time, beliefs, and desires. Additionally, it explores how humans engage in moral reasoning and causal explanation: Are humans born good and tainted by an imperfect world, or do we need to teach children to be moral? Could a concept like ""freedom"" be woven into the human soul, or is it a historical invention, constructed over generations of humans? Written by an eminent list of contributors renowned in child development and cognitive science, this book delves widely, and deeply, into the cognitive tools available at birth that are repurposed, combined, and transformed to complex, abstract adult conceptual representations, and should be of interest to developmental psychologists, linguists, philosophers, and students of cognitive science.

Full Product Details

Author:   David Barner (, Department of Psychology University of California, San Diego) ,  Andrew Scott Baron (, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 23.10cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 15.50cm
Weight:   0.408kg
ISBN:  

9780190467630

ISBN 10:   0190467630
Pages:   408
Publication Date:   08 September 2016
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors XI Acknowledgements XIV Part I: INTRODUCTION 1 1 An Introduction to Core Knowledge and Conceptual Change (David Barner & Andrew Scott Baron) 1 Part II: processes of conceptual change # 2 Some Preliminary Thoughts on a Rational Constructivist Approach to Cognitive Development: Primitives, Symbols, Learning, and Thinking (Fei Xu) # 3 How is Conceptual Change Possible? Insights From Science Education (MariAnne Wiser & Carol L. Smith # 4 Bundles of Contradiction: A Coexistence View of Conceptual Change (Andrew Shtulman & Tania Lombrozo) # 5 Conceptual Change: Where Domain-Specific Learning Mechanisms Meet Domain- General Cognitive Resources (Deborah Zaitchik, Gregg E.A. Solomon, Nathan Tardiff, & Igor Bascandziev) .....# 6 Surprise Enhances Early Learning (Lisa Feigenson) # Part III: Abstract Concepts # 7 Inferring Number, Time, and Color Concepts From Core Knowledge and Linguistic Structure (Katie Wagner, Katharine Tillman, & David Barner) # 8 Different Faces of Language in Numerical Development: Exact Number and Individuation (Susan Levine & Renee Baillargeon # 9 How Numbers are Like the Earth (and Unlike Faces, Loitering or Knitting) (Barbara Sarnecka) # 10 Epistemic Limitations and Precise Estimates in Analog Magnitude Representation (Justin Halberda) # 11 A Framework for Frames of Reference (Anna Shusterman & Peggy Li) # Part IV: Linguistic Structure # 12 Mechanisms for Thinking about Kinds, Instances of Kinds, and Kinds of Things (Sandeep Prasada) # 13 Concepts as Explanatory Structures: Evidence From Word Learning and the Development of Lexical Flexibility (Mahesh Srinivasan) # 14 Conceptualizing the Event: The Relationship Between Infants' Representations and Linguistic Organization (Laura Lakusta & Laura Wagner) # 15 When Children Don't Say What They Know: Syntax Acquisition and Executive Function (Virginia Valian) # Part V: Social and moral Cognition # 16 Core Knowledge and Conceptual Change: A Perspective on Social Cognition (Elizabeth S. Spelke) # 17 Is False Belief Understanding Continuous from Infancy to Preschool Age? (Beate Sodian) # 18 What Neuroscience can Reveal about Cognition and its Origins? (Amy Skerry & Rebecca Saxe) # 19 What Develops in Moral Development? (Paul Bloom & Karen Wynn) # 20 Developmental Origins of Social Group Preferences (Andrew Scott Baron, Yarrow Dunham, & Anthea Pun) # Index

Reviews

< Core Knowledge and Conceptual Change addresses the deepest questions at the heart of cognitive science: How do humans come to know the world? What is innate, and how does conceptual change take place? The answers come from a who's who of developmental psychologists, examining language, number, moral reasoning, theory of mind, and beyond. The result is a dazzling array of insights, hot-off-the-press empirical findings, and further questions that set the research agenda for years to come. A must-read.> Susan Gelman, PhD, Heinz Werner Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Linguistics, University of Michigan < This is an extraordinary collection of chapters focusing on some of the most central questions in cognitive science concerning the origins of concepts, the nature of conceptual change and ultimately what concepts themselves are. Taken together, these chapters offer an invaluable and comprehensive collection of essays that will be of great interest to the cognitive science community.> -Frank Keil, PhD, Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor and Chair of Psychology, Yale University

< This is an extraordinary collection of chapters focusing on some of the most central questions in cognitive science concerning the origins of concepts, the nature of conceptual change and ultimately what concepts themselves are. Taken together, these chapters offer an invaluable and comprehensive collection of essays that will be of great interest to the cognitive science community.> -Frank Keil, PhD, Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor and Chair of Psychology, Yale University < Core Knowledge and Conceptual Change addresses the deepest questions at the heart of cognitive science: How do humans come to know the world? What is innate, and how does conceptual change take place? The answers come from a who's who of developmental psychologists, examining language, number, moral reasoning, theory of mind, and beyond. The result is a dazzling array of insights, hot-off-the-press empirical findings, and further questions that set the research agenda for years to come. A must-read.> * Susan Gelman, PhD, Heinz Werner Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Linguistics, University of Michigan *

Author Information

David Barner, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology and Linguistics at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Barner studies the origin of human language and thought by studying how they develop in children in diverse cultural and linguistic contexts. Andrew Scott Baron, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Baron's research explores the nature of the human capacity to be prejudiced by examining infants' and young children's tendency to categorize others into social groups and to form positive and negative attitudes and beliefs about these groups.

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