From an evolutionary perspective children are, literally, designed to learn. Childhood is a special period of protected immaturity. It gives the young breathing time to master the things they will need to know in order to survive as adults.

It's turns out to be much easier to simulate a grandmaster chess player than it is to simulate a 2-year-old.

I'm afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them.

Putting together philosophy and children would have been difficult for most of history. But very fortunately for me, when I started graduate school there was a real scientific revolution taking place in developmental psychology.

What's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double espressos.

Developmental scientists like me explore the basic science of learning by designing controlled experiments.

Animals are certainly more sophisticated than we used to think. And we shouldn't lump together animals as a group. Crows and chimps and dogs are all highly intelligent in very different ways.