ABSTRACT

This chapter examines how children start to describe mental states; emotional intelligence; how children start to realise other people have minds of their own; and children's understanding of pretending. It also examines how children seem to develop an understanding of psychology itself and case's ambitious attempt to marry Jean Piaget and Lev Semenovitch Vygotsky to develop a new theory of mind. Psychologists have concentrated instead on observable behaviours, such as when infants begin to use verbs that reflect mental states. M. Rutter explains that resilience research aims to find out why some children and adults respond to exposure to stress with increased resistance to later stress, rather than becoming more vulnerable. Imitation and mirror neurons were both over-hyped, so let's cautiously go back to Piaget, who wanted us to see the child as an apprentice logician; there's growing evidence the child is also an apprentice psychologist – and much better at that than at logic.