The Child’s Discovery of the Mind
Janet Astington’s survey of how children come to understand that other people have minds, and that those minds can hold beliefs which are false. The book follows the development from around eighteen months to about five years, works through the experiments the field is built on, and is careful about what they do and do not show. Part of the Developing Child series.
Recommended by 1 Person
Alison Gopnik
Again, the traditional wisdom is that children are egocentric and have a hard time taking the perspective of other people, and they don’t understand the difference between the mind and the body. All this comes from Piaget, and in fact what Janet Astington does in this book is to summarise a whole lot of studies that show how sophisticated even young children are in their understanding of the mind.
Interview · August 2012
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