Do infants have an innate ability to recognise the human face and imitate facial expressions?

View Paper
ESSAY DETAILS Words: 1642
Pages: 6
(approximately 235 words/page)

Essay Database > Social Sciences > Psychology
The debate over whether or not infants are born with innate knowledge has been a long one. Nativist philosophers such as Kant (1781/1958) and Descartes (1638/1965) believed that certain abilities and understandings about the world were innate, whereas Empiricist William James (1890) believed, infants were a tabula rasa (blank slate) upon which information is "written". Even today the debate over whether or not infants are born with innate abilities has not been resolved, but by looking at research …

showed first 75 words of 1642 total
Sign up for EssayTask and enjoy a huge collection of student essays, term papers and research papers. Improve your grade with our unique database!
showed last 75 words of 1642 total
…and Conlern: A two-process theory of infant face recognition. Psychological-Review. 1991 Apr; Vol 98(2): 164-181 Olson, G. M., & Sherman, T. (1983). Attention, learning, and memory in infants. In P. H. Mussen (Ed.) Handbook of child psychology (Vol. 2) New York: Wiley. Pascalis, O. (1995). Mother's Face Recognition by Neonates: A Replication and an Extension. Infant Behaviour and Development, 18, 79-85. Piaget, J. (1951). Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton. Shaffer, D.R. (1999). Developmental Psychology. 5th edition. Brooks/Cole.