The next time you glance at a baby in a crib, appreciate the fact that you are looking at more than just another cute face. You are peering at what scientists are starting to believe is the greatest learning machine in the universe.

	Patricia Kuhl and Andrew Meltzoff

The mind behind those bright blue or brown eyes is faster and far more sophisticated than any computer built, say the authors of the new book, The Scientist in the Crib.

Written by the University of Washington husband-wife team of Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl, along with University of California, Berkeley, psychologist Alison Gopnik, the book is a thoughtful and sometimes humorous exploration of how babies learn. In addition, the authors propose that the way babies acquire knowledge has an uncanny resemblance to how adults use the scientific method to conduct research.

The Scientist in the Crib is not another how-to book. It’s a book aimed at parents and other adults who want to know how children’s minds work as much as they want to know about feeding them and changing their diapers. The book explains the remarkable transformation that happens in the human brain during the first three years of life and how, often unknowingly, parents and others help the process along.

“We are born to teach,” said Kuhl. “We do this naturally and quite unconsciously. It seems as if nature designed us to teach babies in the same way it designed babies to learn.”

The authors wrote the book from the dual perspective of being parents and leading figures in the new field of human developmental science. Meltzoff, professor of psychology, revolutionized the field with his research into how much infants know and how they learn. Kuhl, professor of speech and hearing sciences, is one of the world’s leading authorities on language and speech acquisition. Gopnik is a psychology professor and authority on child learning, psychology, and philosophy.

“The new science shows that babies are thinking, solving problems, and actively learning long before kindergarten,” says Meltzoff. “Developmental scientists are in the crib trying to understanding babies, but when the babies look up they are also trying to understand us.”

The authors explain that when babies are born, they already know many important and surprising things about objects, people, and language. “Babies also easily and naturally solve new problems that are far beyond the abilities of the most powerful computers,” says Meltzoff. “They think, make predictions, look for explanations and even do experiments. And all this spectacular learning happens as part of everyday life in the ordinary child’s world of peek-a-boo, drop the spoon, and the terrible twos.”

Meltzoff equates a baby’s learning process with the process used by scientists seeking to understand the world around them. “As adults we have the capacity to do science because we were once babies,” he says. “We have this curiosity that in children is called play. Scientists just have bigger and more expensive toys. It’s not that children are little scientists but that scientists are big children.”

In the book, the authors explore why children’s brains are more flexible than adults’ and why what we learn at one point influences what we can learn later. They also question the popular notion that listening to Mozart can enhance intelligence. “Playing Mozart in the crib or showing a baby flashcards is no substitute for a parent talking, playing, making faces, and just paying attention to a baby,” says Meltzoff.

“Our book argues that human beings were designed by evolution to both learn and teach,” Meltzoff adds. “For humans, nurture is our nature and the drive to learn is our most important and vital instinct. It’s very clear that learning and education begin before kindergarten. Education is truly a lifelong process.”

[Winter 2000 - Table of Contents]