How Infants Know Minds

In this pathbreaking book, the author draws on the everyday emotional engagements often noticed and reported by parents as well as a wide body of recent research in psychology. Using compelling evidence that young babies can tease, joke, pretend, clown, and show-off, she shows that the awareness of different aspects of other people’s minds – attention and intentions and expectations – develops from early in the first year. The author challenges psychology’s traditional detachment stance by emphasizing on involvement rather than observation. She argues that for both adults as well as infants it is emotional engagement that allows an awareness of minds. This interesting read helps us find out how ‘a feeling for minds’ is present from the beginning of life, and that the starting point for psychological awareness is not isolation and ignorance but emotional relation.

“It’s a book by a sensitive writer who offers many striking insights about children growing up—insights that combine a deep humanity with real psychological and philosophical acumen. There are precious ideas here, well worth sharing with behavioral science, philosophy, anthropology, and related disciplines.”

Jerome Bruner, New York University