Sublime

(this is part of a common diagnostic tool called the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, or the ADOS, and it was developed for use in children).[72]

Consider the game of peekaboo. The love of the game is universal: Some version of it is believed to exist in virtually every culture.69 The language is different, but “the rhythm, dynamics, and shared pleasure” all are the same.70 A familiar face first appears and then disappears behind someone’s hands. The baby sits there, puzzled and slightly ala

The new research in developmental psychology tells us that quite literally from the moment we first see other people, we see them as people. To be a person is to have a mind as well as a body, an inside as well as an outside. To see someone as a person is to see a face, not a mask; a “thou,” not an “it.” We arrive in the world with a set of profoun

The unusually long period for which children are dependent on adults is a clue that humans are designed to learn from others, rather than just through their own explorations.

you may need to challenge ideas about yourself that you and others have come to take for granted.

Tomasello’s great innovation was to create a set of simple tasks that could be given to chimps and to human toddlers in nearly identical form.53 Solving the task earned the chimp or child a treat (usually a piece of food for the chimp, a small toy for the child). Some of the tasks required thinking only about physical objects in physical space—for

Why do we do it? Do we produce motherese simply to get the babies’ attention? (It certainly does that.) Do we do it just to convey affection and comfort? Or does motherese have a more focused purpose? It turns out that motherese is more than just a sweet siren song we use to draw our babies to us. Motherese seems to actually help babies solve the L