Words, Thoughts, and Theories articulates and defends the "theory theory"
of cognitive and semantic development--the idea that infants and young
children, like scientists, learn about the world by forming and revising
theories, a view of the origins of knowledge and meaning that has broad
implications for cognitive science.
Gopnik and Meltzoff interweave philosophical arguments and empirical data
from their own and other's research. Both the philosophy and the
psychology, the arguments and the data, address the same fundamental
epistemological question: How do we come to understand the world around us?
Recently, the theory theory has led to much interesting research. However,
this is the first book to look at the theory in extensive detail and to
systematically contrast it with other theories. It is also the first to
apply the theory to infancy and early childhood, to use the theory to
provide a framework for understanding semantic development, and to
demonstrate that language acquisition influences theory change in children.