I look forward to reviewing this article but if it is any thing like his preface to Harris's book, The Nurture Assumption, it will contain a significant number of disputable contentions. Until very recently, I knew little about Pinker except that he's a renown evolutionary psychologist. However, in the process of doing my critique of Harris's book on "The Nurture Assumption," I naturally read the preface written by Pinker. I had assumed that he had a sound scholarly understanding of developmental psychology but discovered quite to the contrary.
The first revelation that astonished me was his lack of understanding of language development. He states that "A strange factoid in our True-but-Inconvenient file is that children always end up with the language and accent of their peers, not their parents." There is nothing surprising here whatsoever. Research on the acquisition of language has consistently revealed that, due to children's amazing brain plasticity, they are able to acquire new languages quickly and with no accent if such occurs before the age of 12. (In her book, Harris unfortunately uses the fact that children can pick up a second language as well as a new accent early in life as TWO of her three reasons for refuting the Nurture Assumption.) Pinker then proceeds to state that "But among the items stashed away in my True-but-Ignored file was the fact that many successful people--my own father included--were children of immigrants who were not handicapped in the least by culturally inept parents who never acquired the language, customs, or know-how of their adopted land." Are any of you at all surprised that a father of immigrants succeeds in our country? We have many examples of children of immigrants succeeding due to the high value that their parents place on education as well as achievement, Barack Obama being one apt example. Those of us who teach ESL students at Oakton are aware that, more often than not, they out-perform our so-called native students. From discussions with these students, it becomes clear that they highly value their education as well as having impressively high career aspirations. Next Pinker makes the odd and totally unfounded statement that the Harris book "calls into question the standard social science model of the child as a bundle of reflexes and a blank cortex waiting to be programmed by benevolent parents..." Whose standard social science model is he referring to? Who has made that type of claim in the last 50 years, if ever?! Then he states that (apparently in opposition to the standard view) "children. . . must be active players in their own struggle to survive and eventually to reproduce." Who has ever denied that reality? It is not in opposition to any of the more recent theories of child development, including those that happen to believe that parents have an influence on their children. A few sentences later he states "Nature surely did not design children to be putty in their parents' hands." Well, yes, don't most of us agree with that statement? It might be in reference to Watson's claim about 12 healthy infants, as that quote is used in Harris's book. Next he states that "Equally unlikely is the idea that a baby's attachment to its mother sets the pattern for its later commerce with the world--another dogma dissolved in these pages (i.e., Harris's book). He then states that "The attachment hypothesis(hypothesis?) owes its popularity to a tired notion bequeathed to us by Freud and the behaviorists: the baby's mind as a small blank slate that will retain forever the first few inscriptions written on it." Again, where did Pinker get this idea? Attachment theory was developed by Bowlby and Ainsworth and has gone way beyond being a hypothesis. I found the preface astonishing relative to the degree of ignorance it reveals Pinker has relative to commonly accepted ideas and theories supported by psychologists. I need to get back to my critique but I simply couldn't resist responding to this post. Based on his preface, it would appear that Pinker should not be used as a critic of any article or book that reflects on the impact of experience on behavior--as Gladwell certainly does--as Pinker's stance for rejecting the impact of experience is based on outdated and unfounded assumptions. Joan [email protected] > In this Sunday's NY Times Book Review, Steven Pinker reviews > Malcolm Gladwell's new book "What the Dog Saw and Other > Adventures" which is available at: > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.html?_r=1&nl=books&emc=booksupdateema1&pagewanted=all > or > http://tinyurl.com/ygpb9yd > > There is something of interest to both fans and player haters. > Just be careful and don't step on the Igon values. > > -Mike Palij > New York University > [email protected] > > > --- > To make changes to your subscription contact: > > Bill Southerly ([email protected]) > > --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
