Alison Gopnik: There's been a lot of fascinating research over the last 10-15 years on the role of childhood in evolution and about how children learn, from grownups in particular.
"The pulling of a trigger or the touching of an arm," he writes, can be understood only through the intersection of neuron construction, brain chemistry, evolution, childhood environment, and societal structure.
Two big new shows land on Syfy on Monday night — one a sprawling series set across the solar system, the other a three-night adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 novel of transcendent evolution, "Childhood's End".
He manages to cram both the essence of his childhood and the evolution of his adult persona into a two-page introduction, and though we spend seven intense months with him, we come away knowing virtually nothing about his life outside the jungle.
The patient with the most deleterious effect on CAT-3 activity (patient 885, p.Tyr430Cys) had typical autism during childhood but his evolution was favorable and he was diagnosed at 10 years old with high-functioning autism.
Koh S. Role of Neuroinflammation in evolution of childhood epilepsy.
For coverage of Christine Lagarde's evolution from childhood to 2005, see Christine Lagarde (A): A French Prime Minister Calls (2136.0).
Again, she says, it's rooted in the confusions of her childhood, and the political evolution of the 1960s and 1970s.
In a magisterial new work, "The Evolution of Childhood," Melvin Konner, an anthropologist at Emory University, defines play as "inefficient, partly repetitive movements in varied sequences with no apparent purpose".
There she was introduced to science by her uncle and developed interests throughout her childhood in anthropology, archaeology, evolution, and astronomy.
As Melvin Konner, a psychiatrist and anthropologist at Emory University, points out in "The Evolution of Childhood" (Belknap), one of the defining characteristics of Homo sapiens is its "prolonged juvenile period".
