Course material for NACS 645: Introduction to Cognitive Science (Fall 2025) at the University of Maryland. Sessions covered: Innateness 1 (object concepts), Innateness 2 (language).

Required readings:

Spelke, E. S. (1998). Nativism, empiricism, and the origins of knowledge. Infant Behavior and Development, 21, 181-200.
Johnson, S. P. (2010). How infants learn about the visual world. Cognitive Science, 34, 1158-1184.
Dautriche, I., Goupil, L., Smith, K., & Rabagliati, H. (2021). Knowing what we don’t know: Accurate word learning from an unreliable speaker. Open Mind, 5, 1-19.
Pearl, L. (2022). Poverty of the stimulus without tears. Language Learning and Development, 18(4), 415-454.

The material is provided below as a single PDF.

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