The Story of Flo, an Aging Chimpanzee Mother

Flo, inevitably, began to show her age. She wasn't strong enough to wean Flint when the time came, nor to care for her new infant Flame, born when Flint was only four and a half years old (the normal birth interval is five years or more). Flame disappeared during a time when Flo was too ill even to climb into a nest. Though she recovered somewhat after Flame's death, she did not have the strength to discipline Flint, who insisted on riding on her back and sleeping in her nest. When Flo died i...

 Piaget's View on Child Learning

Piaget concluded that babies aren't just born in possession of adult knowledge, either from a past life or from DNA. Instead, Piaget thought that children must have powerful learning mechanisms that allow them to construct new pictures of the world, pictures that might be very different from the adult picture. When we learn about the world, when we do science. for example, we don't just hit the right answer once and for all. Rather, there is a very gradual unfolding sequence of corrected erro...