core knowledge
the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying human cognition. Typically, each mechanism is characterized as having four properties. First, it is domain specific and functions to represent a particular kind of entity (e.g., individual objects, object kinds, places in the environment). Second, it is task specific and uses its representations to track and recognize objects and locations. Third, it uses only a subset of the information delivered by the organism’s input systems (e.g., visual perception) and sends information only to a subset of its output systems. Fourth, it is relatively automatic and impervious to explicitly held beliefs. In neonativist theory, infants and young children are thought to possess core knowledge in areas (relating, e.g., to people and social relations, objects, numbers, and quantities) that have been important throughout human evolutionary history. Its mechanisms are considered to be shared with many nonhuman species.