Alison Gopnik The Evolutionary Power of Children and Teenagers
b'Alison Gopnik understands babies and children as the R&D division of humanity. From her cognitive science lab at the University of California, -Berkeley, she investigates the \\u201cevolutionary paradox\\u201d of the long human childhood. When she first trained in philosophy and developmental psychology, the minds of children were treated as blank slates. But her research is helping us see how even the most mundane facts of a toddler or a teenager \\u2014 from fantasy play to rebelliousness \\u2014 tell us what it means to be human.'