From Chapter 1 to 4 help us understand what babies do, and from chapter 5 to 7 are analysis of experiment results and what scientists did. Chapter 5 is about children’s mind. Children are similar with scientists. Children reprogram themselves in the same way. They formulate theories, make and test predictions, seek explanations, do experiments, and revise what they know in the light of mew evidence. These abilities are at the core of the success of science. (161) Also, children are influenced by people. Children use imitation such as motherese to learn important new things and together the children and other children are helpful to learn the real world.
Chapter 6 is about children’s brains. Children’s brains are much busier than ours. Until the nine or ten years old, their brains are fast. Every part of body is connected to the brain. But, if you don’t use some parts, that parts are disconnected to the brain. So, a few months later babies could discriminate their own language. Early in development we are open to learning the prototypes of many different languages. But by the time we reach puberty, these mental representations of sounds are well formed and become more fixed, and that makes it more difficult to perceive the distinctions of a foreign language (193).
The last chapter is about a whole book and request for parents. Babies are already as smart as they can be, they know what they need to know, and they are very effective and selective in getting the kinds of information they need. They are designed to learn about the real world that surrounds them, and they learn by playing with the things in that world. Parents need to be allowed the time and energy to exercise their natural ability to help babies learn (202).
I like chapter 4, what children learn about language. This is because I could solve my questions during reading the book and I read several times the part to prepare presentation. Specially, I like experiment about what babies like sounds because I think this experiment is uncommon. Babies tell us what they hear by sucking on a special nipple connected to a computer. They slow down; they get bored hearing the same thing over and over again. When the sound is changed, however, infants perk up and suck very fast again to hear the new sound (104-105). They can discriminate the sounds since they are born. They use the sound discrimination to learn language.
Even though I read a whole book, I couldn’t understand many parts. If I can ask to the author, I would ask the author to explain that I wonder why the author think evolution is important to learn something and how evolution and language are relate.
During I read the book, I have some questions. The author said that baby’s brain is open to learn during the certain period. After that period, the baby is hard to learn. Is there no way to learn easy after the certain period? The author said that nurture is cultural. What is different children’s mind between other cultures?
Hi Hyelim, I think is Banduras who created th eperiods of how children learn. according to these periods after a child through them without any nurture its almost impossible for them to learn any words.
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