ABSTRACT
Theory of how human intelligence develops in infants and children has so far taken little from what we now understand about brain growth. The capacity of children for remembering new experiences and for imitating the behaviors and opinions of adults evidently has blinded psychologists to inherent modes of mental function that regulate the growth of this conscious and voluntary life. Psychological studies of infants are becoming sufficiently accurate and experimentally subtle to reveal that newborn brain systems do indeed confer complex mental processes from birth. They show that the subsequent maturation of these mental systems is constrained by intrinsic relations in patterned nerve tissues and not just inserted in a compliant random nerve network by patterns of stimuli reinforced by simple homeostatic principles. The chapter discusses evidence for basic morphogenetic strategies in the emergence of some of the most important psychological abilities of infants.
