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"When our daughter Joan was little more than a year old, on a whim I said to her, "Joanie, go get your shoes." To that point, she had never said a word or given any indication of understanding language, so my request was clearly unrealistic. Yet she looked at me briefly, wheeled around, and disappeared down the hallway. Moments later, she returned, shoes in hand and a smile on her face that expressed a pride matched only by that felt by her astonished father. She understood!"--
Info autore
David R. Olson is University Professor Emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, Canada. He has authored more than 300 articles and 20 books, including The World on Paper (Cambridge, 1994), Psychological Theory and Educational Reform: How School Remakes Mind and Society (Cambridge, 2004) and The Mind on Paper (Cambridge, 2016). His research focuses on children's developing consciousness of their own and others' mental states and on the role that language and literacy play in this development.
Riassunto
Drawing together developmental and philosophical theories of mind, this book argues that understanding is little more than the ability to ascribe understanding to oneself, a development that depends critically on acquiring the linguistic concept of understanding. This account of understanding provides a model for mental states more generally.
Prefazione
This account of children's learning to ascribe understanding to themselves and others may help to explain children's theory of mind.
