Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology at Berkeley and the author of “The Philosophical Baby.” She is the author of an article in The New York Times, from which the excerpt below is taken.

Parents and grand-parents can relax. Dr. Gopnik supports their view that their babies are extraordinary. As the author points out, that has not been the prevailing view among psychologists or philosophers for centuries.

Babies are, she writes, in some ways ” smarter than adults.”

She also says, in the full article, that there are “no perfect toys.”  The search for those perfect toys now can be relaxed. Get a toy which enables the baby to explore more. That’s it.

What a relief. Your choice of the first birthday present does not, in fact, determine what college the child gets into 17 years later.

New York Times

“GENERATIONS of psychologists and philosophers have believed that babies and young children were basically defective adults — irrational, egocentric and unable to think logically. The philosopher John Locke saw a baby’s mind as a blank slate, and the psychologist William James thought they lived in a “blooming, buzzing confusion.” Even today, a cursory look at babies and young children leads many to conclude that there is not much going on.” (Emphasis added)

…“In fact, our mature brain seems to be programmed by our childhood experiences — we plan based on what we’ve learned as children. Very young children imagine and explore a vast array of possibilities. As they grow older and absorb more evidence, certain possibilities become much more likely and more useful. They then make decisions based on this selective information and become increasingly reluctant to give those ideas up and try something new. Computer scientists talk about the difference between exploring and exploiting — a system will learn more if it explores many possibilities, but it will be more effective if it simply acts on the most likely one. Babies explore; adults exploit. (Emphasis added)

“Each kind of intelligence has benefits and drawbacks. Focus and planning get you to your goal more quickly but may also lock in what you already know, closing you off to alternative possibilities. We need both blue-sky speculation and hard-nosed planning. Babies and young children are designed to explore, and they should be encouraged to do so.” (Emphasis added)

Source: The New York Times, August 15, 2009