The Essential Child

Susan A. Gelman is the Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. She has authored more than one hundred publications on language and cognitive development and has received numerous honors and awards, including a J.S. Guggenheim Fellowship, a Distinguished Scientific Award from the American Psychological Association for Early Career Contribution to Psychology, and a Boyd McCandless Young Scientist Award fromDivision 7 of the American Psychological Association. She also serves on the editorial board of several journals. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development, the NationalScience Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation.

"The field of cognitive development can be grateful to Susan Gelman for the gift of a wonderfully integrative account of essentialist thinking. This is by far the most comprehensive account of converging findings that paint a compelling picture of previously unknown aspects of children's thinking. She writes quite well and delights us with her humor." --Human Development"The field of cognitive development can be grateful to Susan Gelman for the gift of a wonderfully integrative account of essentialist thinking. This is by far the most comprehensive account of converging findings that paint a compelling picture of previously unknown aspects of children's thinking. She writes quite well and delights us with her humor." --Human Development"Susan Gelman's The Essential Child is both deep and accessible. She does the field a great service just by pulling together her truly remarkable research program into one integrated story. In doing so, she shows how the data that support the claim that young children have essentialist commitments challenge deeply held views about the nature of young children's thinking and about the nature of human concepts in general. Anybody concerned withunderstanding conceptual development and anybody concerned with understanding human concepts should read this book." --Susan E. Carey, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University"This is a path-breaking book on children's conceptual development with important implications for virtually all of cognitive science." --Douglas Medin, Professor of Psychology, Northwestern University

• PART I: THE PHENOMENA: NOTES ON RESEARCH METHODS; PART II: MECHANISMS OF ACQUISITION; PART III: IMPLICATIONS AND SPECULATIONS