Linda B. Smith

Linda B. Smith (born 1951 ) is an American developmental psychologist internationally recognized for her theoretical and empirical contributions to developmental psychology and cognitive science, proposing, through theoretical and empirical studies, a new way of understanding developmental processes. Smith's works are groundbreaking and illuminating for the field of perception, action, language, and categorization, showing the unique flexibility found in human behavior. She has shown how perception and action are ways of obtaining knowledge for cognitive development and word learning. and A Dynamic Systems Approach to Development: Applications, which approach child development from a dynamic systems perspective, including problems of continuity and discontinuities and nonlinear outcomes.

Smith is a Distinguished Professor and Chancellor's Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University. Tracy Sonneborn Award, Indiana University's highest award to its faculty (1997) Titled Professor - Class of '69 Chancellor's Professor (1997) Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007) Distinguished Professor at Indiana University (2008) Rumelhart Prize from the Cognitive Science Society (2013) APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions (2013) Norman Anderson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Experimental Psychologists (2019) Honors from the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences (2019) Bicentennial Medal (2020) She worked under the supervision of Deborah Kemler at University of Pennsylvania, studying the structure of perceptual experience, with a focus on the visual system. In 1977, Smith joined Indiana University as faculty member in the universities new program in Developmental Psychology. Smith has served as member of the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society.

Research

Smith's research examines developmental processes, and mechanisms of change, in perceptual, motor, cognitive, and language development in infancy and early childhood. Her work emphasizes how myriad skills are dependent on one another. For instance, an infant's ability to sit is connected to their ability to reach for objects, which in turn is connected to new ways of manipulating and viewing objects, which is connected to increased attention to the object's shape and the words used to name it. Dynamic systems theory is a mathematical approach to understanding developmental processes, including evolution and culture, with cumulative incremental changes leading to increases in behavioral complexity over time. All adaptations within the system are a product of the prior state of the organism in interaction with a changing environment, with accumulated effects often leading to qualitative changes in the system. This term refers to children's tendency to extend usage of a newly introduced noun to other exemplars of the category on the basis of the shape of the object, rather than its color, texture, or material. Their studies revealed how young children transition from classifying objects by overall similarities to using dimensional qualities, e.g. color, size, or shape alone.

Books

Golinkoff, R.M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Bloom, L., Smith, L.B., Woodward, A., Akhtar, N., Tomasello, M., & Hollich, G. (2012). Becoming a word learner: A debate on lexical acquisition. Oxford University Press. Smith, L. B., & Thelen, E. E. (1993). A dynamic systems approach to development: Applications. The MIT Press. Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. The MIT Press.

Representative publications Smith, L. B. (1989). A model of perceptual classification in children and adults. Psychological Review, 96(1), 125–144. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.96.1.125 Smith L. B., & Gasser M. (2005). The development of embodied cognition: Six lessons from babies. Artificial Life, 11(1–2), 13–29. https://doi.org/10.1162/1064546053278973 Smith, L. B., Jones, S. S., Landau, B., Gershkoff-Stowe, L., & Samuelson, L. (2002). Object name learning provides on-the-job training for attention. Psychological Science, 13(1), 13–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00403 Smith, L. B., & Thelen, E. (2003). Development as a dynamic system. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(8), 343–348. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00156-6 Smith, L. B., & Yu, C. (2008). Infants rapidly learn word-referent mappings via cross-situational statistics. Cognition, 106(3), 1558–1568. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2007.06.010 Thelen, E., Schöner, G., Scheier, C., & Smith, L. B. (2001). The dynamics of embodiment: A field theory of infant perseverative reaching. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), 1–86. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X01003910 Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (2007). Dynamic systems theories.'' Handbook of child psychology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470147658.chpsy0106