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. With Esther Thelen, she co-authored the books A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action 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.

Honors and awards

Biography

Smith grew up in Portsmouth, NH as the second of five children. Smith received her B.S. degree in Experimental Psychology at University of Wisconsin (1973), doing her honor's thesis with Sheldon Ebenholtz. Smith completed her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1977. 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. She subsequently chaired the Psychological and Brain Science Department at the institution. Smith's research interests include sensory-motor dynamics of attention and learning, word learning, and the development of visual object recognition in infancy and early childhood. Agencies supporting her work include the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. 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

Together with Esther Thelen, Smith proposed a detailed theory of early perceptual, cognitive, and motor development based on dynamic systems. 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. According to this theory, development emerges from local environmental contingencies and internal dynamics of the system nested in different time scales. Smith and Thelen emphasized the role of exploration and selection in the self-organization of perceptual-action (sensorimotor) categories, and the cascading interactions between perception, action, and attention over time. This had a major impact on the field of psychology by introducing new ways of thinking about developmental processes.

Shape bias

Smith is known for her research with Barbara Landau, Susan Jones, and others on the ''shape bias. '' 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. Smith and her collaborators found that the shape bias emerges by age 3 years as a consequence of the child having acquired nouns that name categories of objects organized by shape. Their studies revealed how young children transition from classifying objects by overall similarities to using dimensional qualities, e.g. color, size, or shape alone. Such discoveries led Smith to develop a model of the effects of language on attention. Smith and her collaborators diagnosed the origins, consequences and functionality of the shape bias in supporting vocabulary development.

Eye-tracking studies

Eye-tracker technology allows a new and precise measure of the infant's perspective, and contributes to a better understanding of cognitive and visual development in infancy. Using head mounted eye-tracking, Smith and her colleagues identified changes in the infant's point of view that coincide with development in motor skills, such as the transition from sitting to crawling to walking, and linked changes in the infant's sensorimotor experience with their word learning. Viewing the world from the infant's point of view has increased understand of how everyday experiences contribute to learning.

Books

Representative publications

Interviews and talks