last minute

I actually have done a bunch of work since the last post. While I was in Boston, I read several chapters of a textbook called Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, by Mark Johnson that is basically a first textbook in a newly defined field. This field seems to be what I was searching for, only I didn't realize that the search would turn up anything as coherent as that. I'd found a reference to the field of Developmental Cognitive NEuroscience in the Quartz paper, and went looking for a book called Brain Development and Cognition, A Reader in the library. Next to it on the shelf was the Johnson book, and they turned out to be companion volumes, one the textbook, the other a collection of seminal papers on topics discussed in the textbook.

I read the DCN text while I was in Boston, instead of attending the conference. The only session I went to was the one I presented at. I didn't take any notes, because I was reading in crowded hotel lobbies and cafes, but I folded over the corners of some pages, so hopefully it will all come flooding back to me when I open up the book again.

I assigned readings for the talk out of another book, Rethinking Innateness, that I'd been meaning to get into for a while. Figured assigning reading from it would force me to read some. Luckily the short reading turned out to be on what I thought it would be, and does seem like a relevant sort of introduction. Now I'm going to read the longer chapter... this is going to be a looooong day. After that, I'll try to remember what mI read from the DCN text, then if there's time, I'll read one of the papers from the BDC reader. that's the plan.