The Scientist in the Crib

The Scientist in the Crib is a breezy and accessible overview of the (then) known science concerning the development of the mind in early childhood. The authors' central claim is that babies are much more intelligent than adults assume them to be, and that many infant behaviors are actually the baby's way of experimenting and developing ‘theories' about the world. Chapters are divided by topic, such as children's interactions with other people and language acquisition. Presumably in their effort to avoid writing a book that would intimidate non-scientists, the authors have kept the text essentially devoid of numerical data. While they explain experimental setup well enough, more detail regarding the results of the various experiments they describe would have been appreciated. I agree with other reviewers that the fifth chapter should have been cut; the authors' analogy between babies and computers is somewhat interesting, but the chapter retreads too much material from earlier in the book. The book feels the most dated when it discusses Autism Spectrum Disorder in children, which it describes as a “tragedy” for parents. The only practical advice for parents is found in the final chapter of the book, so the prospective reader should only read this volume cover-to-cover if they are interested in early childhood development for its own sake.