Alison Gopnik

Professor of Psychology. Leader in the study of children's learning and development. Also affiliated with the philosophy department, was the first to argue that children's minds could help us understand deep philosophical questions. She is known for her empirical work on theory of mind and causal learning and her theoretical work on "the theory theory" of cognitive development and the application of Bayesian networks to psychology.  She is the author of over one hundred journal articles and several books including Words, Thoughts and Theories (with Meltzoff, 1996), and the critically acclaimed books The Scientist in the Crib (with Meltzoff and Kuhl, 1999), and The Philosophical Baby; What Children's Minds Tell Us About Love, Truth and the Meaning of Life (2009).  She has also written widely about cognitive science and psychology for Science, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, New Scientist, and Slate, among others. Since 2013 she has written the Mind and Matter column for the Wall Street Journal.