Much discussion about large language models and language-and-vision models has focused on whether these models are intelligent agents. We present an alternative...

A search for the Eastern roots of the Western Enlightenment

Adverse early experiences can make young minds inflexible, while a carefree childhood has clear cognitive benefits.

Much discussion about large language models and language-and-vision models has focused on whether these models are intelligent agents. We present an alternative...

Parents may worry that babies surrounded by face masks will suffer in their development. Studies suggest there’s no cause for concern.

Inaugural 2022 APS James S. Jackson Fellow AwardHonoring APS Members for their lifetime of outstanding psychological research that advances understanding of historically disadvantaged racial and...

I argue that the evolution of our life history, with its distinctively long, protected human childhood, allows an early period of broad hypothesis search and exploration, before the demands of...

Nature Human Behaviour - Giron et al. provide empirical evidence that human development has much in common with the algorithm of ‘stochastic optimization’ widely used in machine...

[FREE TO READ] Using infants to develop artificial intelligence technology underscores just how phenomenal their brains are

Alison Gopnik (UC Berkeley)https://simons.berkeley.edu/talks/large-language-models-cultural-technologyAI and HumanityRecent work on large language models has...

In his new book, Steven Pinker is curiously blind to the power and benefits of small-town values.

Six UC Berkeley scientists are among the 396 newest fellows elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for “advancing science applications that are deemed scientifica...

Artificial intelligence has staged a revival by starting to incorporate what we know about how children learn

The future of artificial intelligence depends on designing computers that can think and explore as resourcefully as babies do.

But Biden has offered a way to reduce child poverty by half. That would be transformative.

A new study shows that recipients of a cash windfall usually give much of it away, even if they don’t get credit for their generosity.

From nature to nurture, this docuseries explores the groundbreaking science that reveals how infants discover life during their very first year.

Although adults use metaphors to guide their thinking and reasoning, less is known about whether metaphors might facilitate cognition earlier in development. Pr...

We survey a current, heated debate in the artificial intelligence (AI) research community on whether large pretrained language models can be said t...

Intuitively, children appear to be more exploratory than adults, and this exploration seems to help children learn, but there have been few clear tests of this idea. We test whether exploration and...

The way human beings have learned how to be adults for millennia is under siege.

Scientists have long studied play to gain insights into the developing human mind.

Developmental Science is an international journal publishing contemporary scientific developmental psychology and developmental cognitive neuroscience research.

APS President Alison Gopnik writes that the contrast between the reasoning of creative 4-year-olds and predictable artificial intelligence may be a key to understanding how human intelligence works.

Artificial intelligence programs that learn to write and speak can sound almost human—but they can’t think creatively like a small child can.

The psychologist Alison Gopnik and Ezra Klein discuss what children can teach adults about learning, consciousness and play.

APS President Alison Gopnik writes that the contrast between the reasoning of creative 4-year-olds and predictable artificial intelligence may be a key to understanding how human intelligence works.

Videos from the "Origins of Common Sense in Humans and Machines" workshop from CogSci 2020

by Louise Glück There was an apple tree in the yard— this would have been forty years ago—behind, only meadows. Drifts of crocus in the damp grass. I stood at that window: late April. Spring flower...

Research shows that even young children can understand what dogs want and will try to help them.

How does creativity develop? Creativity is a multi-faceted behavior and thus it is difficult to find measures for creativity that are both precise and comparable across development. Here, we examine...

Research shows that daydreaming and woolgathering are specialized mental functions with a unique pattern of brain waves.

New research shows that children from different backgrounds are more able to delay gratification for different kinds of rewards

In his new book, Steven Pinker is curiously blind to the power and benefits of small-town values.

Nature Communications - Lower income is associated with smaller hippocampal volume and mental health problems. Here, the authors show that this association is weaker in areas of the United States...

Developmental Science is an international journal publishing contemporary scientific developmental psychology and developmental cognitive neuroscience research.

APS President Alison Gopnik writes that the contrast between the reasoning of creative 4-year-olds and predictable artificial intelligence may be a key to understanding how human intelligence works.

A test for creating distinctive shapes tracks how people get inspiration and act on it. It turns out a placebo can help.

This episode is  produced in association with the CASBS project "The Social Science of Caregiving," and draws further inspiration from the CASBS project "Ima...

Much discussion about large language models and language-and-vision models has focused on whether these models are intelligent agents. We present an alternative perspective. We argue that these...

Much discussion about large language models and language-and-vision models has focused on whether these models are intelligent agents. We present an alternative...

Many human societies feature institutions for redistributing resources from some individuals to others, but preferred levels of redistribution vary greatly within and between populations. We postul...