Shadowing Practice: Core Knowledge (Stanford Psych 60) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Hi, my name is Kara Wiseman.

I'm a PhD student in developmental psychology at Stanford.

I study social cognitive development, focusing on how young children and adults think about concepts like consciousness, sentience, and personhood.

Today, I'm going to be talking to you about a very influential idea in developmental psychology, that babies are born with what researchers call core knowledge.

Some researchers think that infants mostly rely on all -purpose mechanisms for learning about the world.

These mechanisms are domain general, meaning that they can be applied to everything from learning about the physical world,

to understanding numbers, to figuring out social relationships.

Other researchers think that infants are born with more domain -specific ways of making sense of their experiences.

They think that infants are born with a handful of distinct cognitive systems for reasoning about different parts of the world.

This perspective is called the theory of core knowledge.

On this theory, the human mind contains a few, maybe five or six, core knowledge systems,

and each one is responsible for dealing with just a small chunk of the world.

Here's one well -studied example of a core knowledge system, the core object system.

The core object system supports reasoning about objects, like rocks or strawberries or basketballs, and the laws of physics that govern them.

This system, like other core knowledge systems, is characterized by a handful of key principles, specific pieces of knowledge that guide reasoning in this domain.

In the core object system, one of these key principles is the principle of cohesion.

Objects should hold together across time and space, rather than disintegrating.

Objects should also obey the principle of continuity, that is, they should move along continuous paths through time and space,

rather than appearing and disappearing at random.

Finally, there's the principle of contact.

Objects should only start to move when something else touches them, and not without being touched.

The reason these three key principles, cohesion, continuity, and contact,

are said to characterize the core object system is

because studies have shown that infants expect objects to behave according to these principles and are surprised when objects violate them.

Another important part of the core object system and other core knowledge systems is that it is characterized by signature limits,

situations in which the system falls apart.

Studies with both young infants and adults have demonstrated

that the core object system can keep track of about three to four of these objects at a time, but not more.

And it doesn't do well with things like piles of sand, liquids, or other substances, which violate the key principle of cohesion.

This can lead to some pretty funny experimental findings, like young infants seeming not to notice when a single pile of sand goes behind a curtain,

and then have somehow turned into two separate piles of sand when the curtain is raised.

So far, research indicates that there are about five or six of these core knowledge systems,

each of which has its own set of key principles and signature limits.

The core object system is one of the best studied, but there is also extensive research on a core number system,

supporting reasoning about quantity and keeping track of how many things there are in some context.

A core agent system, supporting reasoning about creatures that act autonomously to pursue their goals,

a core place system, supporting navigation around an environment, and a core system for shape or form, supporting representation of the shapes of objects.

Recently, some researchers have also speculated about a core knowledge system for social partners, supporting reasoning about social interactions and relationships.

This is still an active area of research.

Core knowledge theorists argue that these core systems are innate, present at birth rather than learned over time,

and that the systems are shared across many species, rather than being unique to humans.

Researchers have converged on these conclusions from a few different angles.

Many researchers conduct studies with humans of different ages, including research with newborn infants, with older infants as they gain more experience and skills,

with toddlers as they become fluent speakers of their language.

with school children, as they are explicitly instructed in arithmetic, geometry, manners, and other subjects, and with adults.

Another research approach has been to compare performance across species, including not only humans, but also non -human primates,

newly hatched chicks, zebrafish, and even ants.

Finally, researchers sometimes compare performance across different cultural contexts that vary in the languages people use, the everyday environments that people experience,

and the values and beliefs that people hold.

For example, lots of research has compared people living in highly industrialized urban centers like

San Francisco or Beijing to people living in isolated indigenous communities in rural Papua New Guinea or the Amazonian rainforest.

Across many of these studies, participants of different ages, species,

and cultural contexts have all shown similar sensitivities to the key principles and signature limits of each of the core knowledge systems,

leading some researchers to argue that these systems are likely to be innate and species general.

Other researchers disagree.

It's important to note that the theory of core knowledge does not claim to explain all of human cognition.

Core knowledge theorists would not claim

that there are an infinite number of core knowledge systems for all the different chunks of the world

we might reason about or interact with, or that there are core knowledge systems for things like computers or astrophysics,

which have no plausible role in evolutionary history.

Instead, researchers in this tradition view the small handful of core knowledge systems as fundamental building blocks that, over the course of learning and development,

combine to help us reason about more and more complex concepts like computers, astrophysics, and minds.

For more on the topic of core knowledge, check out these papers.

Thank you.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Core Knowledge”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: core, knowledge, object, principle, researchers. This video has 35 sentences and 982 words to shadow. The speech runs for 7:02. The speaker talks at a steady 140 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
principle noun	/ˈpɹɪn.sɪ.pəl/	A fundamental assumption, fundamental law or guiding belief.
researcher noun	/ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/	One who researches.
infants noun		The section of a primary school for the education of younger children, typically the classes of reception or kindergarten and years (grades) one and two.
compare verb	/kəmˈpɛɚ/	To assess the similarities and differences between two or more things [“to compare X with Y”]. Having made the comparison of X with Y, one might have found it…
sand noun	/sænd/	Rock that is ground more finely than gravel, but is not as fine as silt (more formally, see grain sizes chart), forming beaches and deserts and also used in…
domain noun	/ˌdəʊˈmeɪ̯n/	A geographic area owned or controlled by a single person or organization.
signature noun	/ˈsɪɡ.nə.t͡ʃə/	A person's name, written by that person, used as identification or to signify approval of accompanying material, such as a legal contract.
pile noun	/paɪl/	A mass of things heaped together; a heap.
handful noun	/ˈhæn(d)fʊl/	The amount that a hand will grasp or contain.
argue verb	/ˈɑɹ.ɡju/	To show grounds for concluding (that); to indicate, imply.
psychology noun	/saɪˈkɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/	The study of the human mind.
mechanism noun	/ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/	Any mechanical means for the conversion or control of motion, or the transmission or control of power.
cognitive adjective	/ˈkɑɡ.nɪ.tɪv/	Relating to the part of mental functions that deals with logic, as opposed to affective which deals with emotions.
curtain noun	/ˈkɜɹt(ə)n/	A piece of cloth covering a window, bed, etc. to offer privacy and keep out light.
developmental adjective	/dɪˌvɛləpˈmɛntəl/	Related to development.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
check out verb	To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
fall apart verb	To disintegrate, to break into pieces.
figure out verb	To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
hold together verb	To cause to stay together.
move along verb	To continue without being distracted; to keep going.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are born · can be applied · is called
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have shown · have demonstrated · have also speculated

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 3 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: theorist /ˈθiːəɹəst/, arithmetic /æɹɪθˈmɛtɪk/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: conclusion /kənˈkluːʒən/, representation /ˌɹɛp.ɹə.zɛnˈteɪ.ʃən/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, consciousness /ˈkɑnʃəsnəs/, influential /ɪnflʊˈɛnʃəl/
Long words — get the stress right: psychology /saɪˈkɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, mechanism /ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/, developmental /dɪˌvɛləpˈmɛntəl/, continuity /ˌkɑn.tɪˈn(j)u.ə.ti/, representation /ˌɹɛp.ɹə.zɛnˈteɪ.ʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like principle, researcher, infants.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Core Knowledge (Stanford Psych 60) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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