Elizabeth Spelke
Elizabeth Spelke | |
---|---|
Born | May 28, 1949 |
Education | Harvard University (BA) Yale University Cornell University (MA, PhD) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | developmental psychology, cognitive development |
Institutions | Harvard University |
Website | http://harvardlds.org/our-labs/spelke-labspelke-lab-members/elizabeth-spelke/ |
Elizabeth Shilin Spelke FBA (born May 28, 1949) is an American cognitive psychologist at the Department of Psychology of Harvard University and director of the Laboratory for Developmental Studies.
Starting in the 1980s, she carried out experiments on infants and young children to test their cognitive faculties. She has suggested that human beings have a large array of innate mental abilities.
Education and career
Spelke did her undergraduate studies at
She did her
Her first academic post was at the University of Pennsylvania, where she worked for nine years. Thereafter she moved first to Cornell, and then to MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. She has been a professor at Harvard since 2001.[4]
Spelke was elected a Fellow of the
Experiments
The kind of experiments carried out at the Laboratory of Developmental Studies try to infer the cognitive abilities of babies by using the method of
For example, researchers may repeatedly show a baby an image with a certain number of objects. Once the baby is habituated, they present a second image with more or fewer objects. If the baby looks at the new image for a longer time, the researchers may infer that the baby can distinguish different quantities.
Through an array of similar experiments, Spelke interpreted her evidence to suggest that babies have a set of highly sophisticated, innate mental skills. This provides an alternative to the hypothesis originated by William James that babies are born with no distinctive cognitive abilities but acquire them all through education and experience (see Principles of Psychology, 1890).
The debate on sex and intelligence
In 2005, Lawrence Summers, then Harvard president, speculated over the preponderance of men over women in high-end science and engineering positions. He surmised that a statistical difference in the variance of innate abilities among male and female populations (male variance tends to be higher, resulting in more extremes) could play a role. His words immediately sparked a heated debate. Spelke was among the strongest critics of Summers, and in April 2005, she faced Steven Pinker in an open debate over the issue.[2] She declared that her own experiments revealed no difference between the mental capacities of male and female children ranging in age from 5 months to 7 years old.[10]
References
- PMID 11280937.
- ^ a b "Edge: THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE". www.edge.org. Retrieved 2022-09-02.
- PMID 16366817.
- ^ Spelke, Elizabeth. Curriculum Vita [pdf]. http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~lds/pdfs/spelkecv_mar07.pdf Archived 2014-11-29 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter S" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 7 April 2011.
- ^ "British Academy Fellowship reaches 1,000 as 42 new UK Fellows are welcomed". 16 Jul 2015.
- ^ "Heineken Prizes - Elizabeth Spelke". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on 13 May 2016. Retrieved 10 May 2016.
- ^ "Honoris Causa Elizabeth Spelke".
- ^ "Honoris Causa for Elizabeth Spelke in Uruguay".
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-09-02.
External links
- Harvard faculty profile of Spelke
- Spelke lab website
- New York Times profile of Spelke
- Edge.org profile of Spelke
- Video (and audio) of conversation discussing some of her research with Spelke and Joshua Knobe on Bloggingheads.tv
- Margaret Talbot, The baby lab, The New Yorker, Sep. 4, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20090122052520/http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2006/the_baby_lab