The Essential Child: Origins of Essentialism in Everyday Thought

In this book, Susan Gelman argues that essentialism is an early cognitive bias. She argues against the standard view of children as concrete of focused on the obvious, instead claiming have an early, powerful tendency to search for hidden, nonobvious features of things. Gelman also attacks claims that children build up their knowledge of the world based on simple, associative learning strategies, arguing that children's concepts are embedded in rich folk theories.

by: Susan A. Gelman