A cutting-edge exploration of what evolutionary psychology is teaching us of the development and learning of children, in the tradition of Matt Ridley's The Red Queen and Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct.

Learning begins in the first days of life. Scientists are now discovering how young children develop emotionally and intellectually, and are beginning to realize that from birth babies already know a staggering amount about the world around them. In the first book of its kind for a popular audience, three leading US scientists draw on twenty-five years of research in philosophy, psychology, computer science, linguistics and neuroscience to reveal what babies know and how they learn it.