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Linda B. Smith (born 1951 ) is a 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

 * American Psychological Association (APA) Distinguished Scientific Awards for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology (1985)


 * 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)
 * APS William James Fellow Award (2018)
 * Norman Anderson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Experimental Psychologists (2019)
 * Honors from the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences (2019)
 * Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2019)
 * Bicentennial Medal (2020)

Biography
Smith received her B.S. degree in Experimental Psychology at University of Wisconsin (1973), doing her honor's thesis with Dr 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 especially through the visual dimensions.

In 1977, Smith joined Indiana University as faculty member in Developmental Psychology. She has chaired the Psychological and Brain Science Department at the same institution. She is currently a Chancellor's Professor and Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Science, and of Cognitive Science, at Indiana University-Bloomington.

Her current research interests include sensory-motor dynamics of attention and learning, word learning, and the development of visual object recognition mostly in infancy.

Agencies that have supported the Smith's work include the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation since 1978. Smith has served as member of the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society.

Research
Smith's work examines developmental process and mechanisms of change in infancy and early childhood. Together with Esther Thelen, she proposed a detailed theory to comprehend early human development starting from their expertise on perceptual, cognitive, and motor development based on dynamic systems. The theory explains cognition and action happening from processes of exploration and selection. This work has major impact on Developmental Psychology field for bringing new ways of thinking about developmental domains. Based on this theory, Smith has also been studying language learning and cognition.

Smith developed a model about the effects of language on attention, which has impacted the comprehension of language disorders and the development. Smith's works show how the interaction between infant’s natural predispositions and visual world leading to object name learning. Her studies reveal the transition young children do from classifying objects by overall similarities to using dimensional identities, e.g. color, size, or shape alone, like adults.

Smith emphasizes how skills are dependent on one another, for instance sitting is connected to reaching, which is connected to seeing, which is connected to shape, and this connected to learning how to name objects.

Dynamic Systems Theory
In collaboration with Esther Thelen, Smith developed a mathematical approach to better understand development as evolution and culture, with cumulative changes that increase in complexity. All adaptations in the system are in part a product of the prior state of the organism with its past changes. This theory explain the processes of exploration and selection to the development of self-organizing perception-action categories. Through a complex systems view, they analyzed the cascading interactions between perception, action, and attention.

According to this theory, local adaptations are capable of changing the organism, and development emerge from local environmental contingencies and internal dynamics of the system nested in different time scales.

Shape bias
Smith is also well known for her research with Barbara Landau, Susan Jones, and others and on the ''shape bias. '' This term refers to children's tendency to extend usage a newly introduced noun to other exemplars of the category on the basis of the shape of the object, rather its color, texture, or material.

Smith's contributions about the shape bias advanced psychological science’s understanding of language acquisition in young children. Smith diagnosed the origins, consequences and functionality of the shape bias, and its effect in atypical development.

Her works show the tendency children have to generalize new concrete nouns based on the shape of the object to which they refer. Specifically, she found that, at the age of 2-3, children will use the same name for an object if it has the same shape regardless of material or size, e.g. children will refer “tractor” to John Deeres, ride-on mowers, and antiques  – regardless of size or texture. This finding supports the understanding of language acquisition since it explains children's quick ability to learn words early in life.

Smith reinforces that when a child learns a noun there is a specific context and timing, that will, to some extent, change the child. This process with its accumulated effects will lead to qualitative change in the system. The changes are dependent on the specific history of the learn and their internal dynamics.

Eye-tracker studies
Eye-tracker technology allows a new and precise measure of infant's perspective which contributes to a better understanding of cognitive and visual development in infancy. Smith is cited as one of the first researchers to link infant's point of view to object name learning using head mounted eye-tracker. Using this technology Smith was able to better understand everyday experience that leads to learning progress from infancy toward maturity.

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.

Selected publications

 * McClelland, J. L., Botvinick, M. M., Noelle, D. C., Plaut, D. C., Rogers, T. T., Seidenberg, M. S., & Smith, L. B. (2010). Letting structure emerge: Connectionist and dynamical systems approaches to cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(8), 348–356. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.06.002
 * 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, & Gasser M. (2005). The development of embodied cognition: six lessons from babies. Artificial Life. Winter-Spring;11(1-2):13-29. https://doi.org/10.1162/1064546053278973
 * Smith, L., & 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

Interviews and talks

 * Interview with Linda Smith for our 2017 GOLD Perinatal Online Conference
 * Linda B. Smith "Connections in Psychological and Brain Sciences"
 * Linda B. Smith "The Development of Visual Experience"
 * Linda B. Smith "Why Self-Generated Learning May Be More Radical and Consequential Than First Appears"
 * PsyTalks: Episode 1 - Movement and babies' learning development
 * Episodes of Experience and Generative Intelligence | Linda B. Smith at AMLC 2022