From the introduction to the first chapter the author has explained how we as adults tend to underestimate children and think that they don't understand much or are not as smart as we are.
Alison Gopnik states that "babies attend the world in a different way that we do, and this kind of attention is related to their extraordinary learning abilities" (16). Babies can be very intelligent and perceive the world and what goes on around them as well as we do.
through an intensive study, Gopnik and her colleagues have concluded that children's brains have an immense capacity to think counterfactually, which is basically when we look at different possibilities from a certain situation and ultimately choose the one we consider best. She describes in detail how she conducted such studies with babies to get to this conclusion.
Also, the power there is in children's imagination and how language plays an important role "learning language gives children a whole powerful new way to imagine." (28). She helps you see how language interacts with imagination, and the importance it has in a child's intelectual development "being able to talk about possibilities helps you to imagine them." (29).
Another aspect that caught my attention was that not only psycologists have become more interested about children's minds and behavior; philosophers and even scientists are also intrigued by how much can a baby now and understand and how much can we as adults learn from them, even more than we can imagine.
Wow, I knew babies had great learning abilities, but the whole idea that you mention, their ability to think counterfactually, blew me away. I had no idea babies had advanced thought processes like that, though knowing how much language they can pick up when they are that age, seems to make sense. You also mention how imagination plays a role in language, this is something that was discussed in my book as well, though seeing it from the infant perspective, while considering how active children's imaginations are, it seems to me that maybe the whimsical imagination instilled in the young might also be what helps to create their great language capabilities.
ReplyDeleteI absolutly agree with you, children's imagination can be so powerful that it can allow them to acquire more than one language at once. I know this boy who by the age of 4 was fluently speaking English, Spanish, and French! Of course he's been fortunate enough to have a Spanish mother a French dad and English he picked up real qick when he started school, but my point is his ability to distinguish each language and which one to use depending on who he's talking to. How cool is that!
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