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The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature is a 2007 book by experimental psychologist Steven Pinker. Pinker "analyzes how our words relate to thoughts and to the world around us and reveals what this tells us about ourselves." [1] Put another way, Pinker "probes the mystery of human nature by examining how we use words". [2]
On Human Nature (1978; second edition 2004) is a book by the biologist E. O. Wilson, in which the author attempts to explain human nature and society through sociobiology. Wilson argues that evolution has left its traces on characteristics such as generosity, self-sacrifice, worship and the use of sex for pleasure, and proposes a ...
Behaviorists look at learning as an aspect of conditioning and advocating a system of rewards and targets in education. Educators who embrace cognitive theory believe that the definition of learning as a change in behaviour is too narrow, and study the learner rather than their environment—and in particular the complexities of human memory.
The philosopher Douglas Kellner credited Habermas with demonstrating the importance of psychoanalysis for "increasing understanding of human nature and contributing to the process of self-formation". He suggested that Habermas made better use of several Freudian ideas in Knowledge and Human Interests than did Marcuse in Eros and Civilization. [27]
Consequently, a usage-based model accounts for these rule-governed language behaviours by providing a representational scheme that is entirely instance-based, and able to recognize and uniquely represent each familiar pattern, which occurs with varying strengths at different instances. His usage-based model draws on the cognitive psychology of ...
The development of the human mind is complex and a debated subject, and may take place in a continuous or discontinuous fashion. [4] Continuous development, like the height of a child, is measurable and quantitative, while discontinuous development is qualitative, like hair or skin color, where those traits fall only under a few specific phenotypes. [5]
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a best-selling 2002 book by the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, in which the author makes a case against tabula rasa models in the social sciences, arguing that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations.
The development of the Nicaraguan sign language (NSL) by students in a school for the deaf also lends evidence to the critical-period hypothesis. Initially a pidgin sign language with simple grammar, it had large grammatical differences and variations across signers.