Is children's language acquisition based on innate linguistic structures or built from cognitive and communicative skills? This book summarises the major theoretical debates in all of the core domains of child language acquisition research (phonology, word-learning, inflectional morphology, syntax and binding) and includes a complete introduction to the two major contrasting theoretical approaches: generativist and constructivist. For each debate, the predictions of the competing accounts ...

Animal science is bizarre and wonderful. At the extreme end of zoology, psychologists are designing personality tests for dogs and logic problems for pigeons. They're giving fish spatial reasoning problems and asking cockatoos to keep a beat.Now, through dozens of interactive puzzles, IQ tests and quizzes, Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee? lets you test yourself against the best nature has to offer. So: are you more than a match for a marmoset? Or a bit of a birdbrain?

Psychology 101 as you wish it were taught: a collection of entertaining experiments, quizzes, jokes, and interactive exercisesPsychology is the study of mind and behavior: how and why people do absolutely everything that people do, from the most life-changing event such as choosing a partner, to the most humdrum, such as having an extra donut. Ben Ambridge takes these findings and invites the reader to test their knowledge of themselves, their friends, and their fa...

**“Lovely, celebratory. For all the belittling of ‘bird brains,’ [Ackerman] shows them to be uniquely impressive machines . . .” —New York Times Book Review“A lyrical testimony to the wonders of avian intelligence.” —Scientific AmericanAn award-winning science writer tours the globe to reveal what makes birds capable of such extraordinary feats of mental prowess**Birds are astonishingly intelligent creatures. According to revolutionary new research...

An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise, based on the popular blog of the same name.Whether you’re deciding which smartphone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic. But here’s the truth: You are not so smart. You’re just as deluded as the rest of us—but that’s okay, because being deluded is part of being human.Growing out of David ...

How can we give animals the best life—for them? What does an animal need to be happy? In her groundbreaking, best-selling book Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin drew on her own experience with autism as well as her experience as an animal scientist to deliver extraordinary insights into the science of animal emotions and how animals think, act, and feel. Now she builds on those insights to show us how to give our animals the best and happiest life—on their terms, not ours. Kn...

As Charles Darwin suggested more than a century ago, the differences between animals and humans are of degree and not of kind.” Not long ago, ethologists denied that animals had emotions or true intelligence. Now, we know that rats laugh when tickled, magpies mourn as they cover the departed with greenery, female whales travel thousands of miles for annual reunions with their gal pals, seals navigate by the stars, bears hum when happy, and crows slide down snowy rooftops for fun.I...

The New York Times Bestseller that explores animal intelligence and will alter the way we as humans view other species.Have you ever wondered what it is like to be a fish? Or a parrot, dolphin, or an elephant? Do they experience thoughts that are similar to ours, or have feelings of grief and love? These are tough questions, but scientists are answering them. They know that ants teach and rats love to be tickled. They’ve discovered that dogs have thousand-...

A New York Times bestseller: "A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds." —Alison Gopnik, The AtlanticHailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition—in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos—to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long. Did ...

**NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of The Drunkard’s Walk, a startling, eye-opening examination of how the unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world.“Mlodinow plunges into the realm of the unconscious mind accompanied by the latest scientific research ... [with] plenty of his trademark humor.” —Los Angeles Times**Over the past two decades of neurological research, it has become increasingly clear that the way we experience the wo...

**A FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZENAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, SMITHSONIAN, AND WALL STREET JOURNALA major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world.**In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch ...

**A New York Times Editors' ChoiceA Washington Post Best Nonfiction Book of 2021A New York Times Notable BookA bold new book reveals how we can tap the intelligence that exists beyond our brains—in our bodies, our surroundings, and our relationships**Use your head.That’s what we tell ourselves when facing a tricky problem or a difficult project. But a growing body of research indicates that we’ve got it exactly backw...