science

Rethinking Innateness

Rethinking Innateness is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Rethinking Innateness rather than just read about it. In short: Rethinking Innateness: A connectionist perspective on development is a book regarding gene/environment interaction by Jeffrey Elman, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Elizabeth Bates, Mark Johnson, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett published in 1996. It has been cited about 4,000 times in scientific articles, and has been nominated as one of the "One hundred most influential works in cognitive science from the 20th Century".

Key takeaways

Rethinking Innateness belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Rethinking Innateness to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Rethinking Innateness from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Rethinking Innateness: A connectionist perspective on development is a book regarding gene/environment interaction by Jeffrey Elman, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Elizabeth Bates, Mark Johnson, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett published in 1996. It has been cited about 4,000 times in scientific articles, and has been nominated as one of the "One hundred most influential works in cognitive science from the 20th Century".

Summary Rethinking Innateness applied insights from neurobiology and neural network modelling to brain development. It questioned whether some of the "hard nativist" positions, such as those adopted by Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke, are biologically plausible. For example, the authors challenged a claim by Pinker that children are born with innate domain-specific knowledge of the principles of grammar, by questioning how the knowledge that Pinker suggests might actually be encoded in the genes. Elman et al. argue that information concerning something as specific as grammatical rules (which they classify as propositional information) could only be encoded as pre-specified "weights" between neurons in the cortex. But they argue that evidence from a number of sources, such as brain plasticity (the ability of a brain to change its response properties during development) shows that information cannot be hard-wired in this way. Instead, they argue that genes might influence brain development by determining a system's "architectural constraints". By establishing the physical structure of a system, they argue that genes would, in effect, be determining the learning algorithms the system employs to respond to the environment. They argue that the specific propositional information in the system would be determined as a result of the system responding to environmental stimulation.

Influences The ideas in Rethinking Innateness have been influential and developed in a number of ways. For example Mark Johnson has gone on to develop his Interactive Specialization hypothesis, in part building on ideas from Rethinking Innateness. Jeffrey Elman has also gone on to become one of the most widely recognized figures in computational neuroscience, recently being awarded the David E. Rumelhart Prize for Theoretical Contributions to Cognitive Science.

See also Innateness hypothesis Connectionism

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Rethinking Innateness

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Rethinking Innateness claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Rethinking Innateness before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Rethinking Innateness ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Rethinking Innateness

In research: Rethinking Innateness appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Rethinking Innateness in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Rethinking Innateness is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Cognitive science literature, Science book stubs, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Rethinking Innateness outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Rethinking Innateness in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Rethinking Innateness means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Rethinking Innateness out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Rethinking Innateness in simple terms?

Why does Rethinking Innateness matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Rethinking Innateness?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Rethinking Innateness.