Saturday, April 28, 2007

Judith Harris on "Why home does not matter"

Judith Harris whose research on the effects of home and parenting figured prominently in the works of Steven Pinker (How the Mind Works), Steven Levitt (Freakonomics) and Matt Ridley (Nature via Nurture) returns to the topic with a new book and an article in Prospect:
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9275
It is very readable and there is a lot of research and common sense in what she says but I am not sure about her theory of basing her conclusions on the modular brain theory. This theory is not that widely accepted. See, for example, Herbert Gintis's comments in " Adopting Minds and Evolutionary Psychology" available from the papers section of http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gintis/
UPDATE: Here is alink to author profile of Judith Harris and her research :http://home.att.net/~xchar/tna/bio.htm
Apparently she was dismissed from a doctoral programme and is an independent reseacher.