The Cradle of Thought

In Cradle of Thought Peter Hobson, a Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the Tavistock Clinic and the University of London, examines how thought develops in infants, focussing on the subsequent differences in the quality of thinking between individuals and what this suggests about the place of thought in the history of evolution. At the book's heart is a radical new theory which tackles head-on the ideas of people like Stephen Pinker. Hobson firmly refutes the notion that thinking is turned on by biologically pre-determined 'modules' in the brain, arguing instead that it arises from the nature and quality of the relationship between parent and child in the first eighteen months of life. Drawing on twenty years of clinical experience, on case histories and experimental and clinical research, this will be a controversial book not only in scientific circles, but also in its contribution to the wider parenting, IQ and nature/nurture debates. Accessible, authoritative and extremely readable, Cradle of Thought is a major work of popular science.

'Any parent reading his account will recognise that it makes sense' Sunday Times