What’s there to know about babies? They’re cute, they scream, and
sometimes they sound like Bruce Willis. They’re also really smart. Sure,
every parent thinks their baby is a genius, but truthfully, human
infants genuinely are pretty intelligent. They can distinguish emotions,
make logical deductions, and even grasp abstract concepts. In a lot of
ways, they’re not so different from adults. Except they’re a lot
smaller.
10Babies Can Understand Other People’s Thoughts
Before we get started, we need to establish how scientists “interview”
babies. As you might’ve noticed, infants are a little lacking in the
conversational department, so scientists rely on other methods to
interpret baby behavior. When conducting experiments, researchers pay
close attention to how long babies look at an object. If a baby
encounters something surprising or confusing, the child will
stare at that object for a very long time. Keep that in mind as we work through this list.
Now, it’s long been common knowledge that babies don’t understand
that other people have different ideas and emotions from their own.
However, with new discoveries in the field of babyology happening every
day, researchers are starting to have a new appreciation for infants’
ability to understand the thought processes of others.
Agnes Kovacs of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest ran an
experiment on 56 kids, all seven months old. The children watched
cartoons in which a character who looked like a Smurf observed a ball
rolling on a table. Occasionally, the ball would stop behind a
rectangle. However, after the character wandered off, the mischievous
ball would move off-screen. The babies knew the ball was gone, but the
character didn’t.
When Papa Smurf came back and discovered the ball was gone (via a dramatic removal of the rectangle),
the babies acted surprised.
They stared at the screen even though they knew the ball had rolled
away. Researchers theorize their display of disbelief was because they
were relating to the character onscreen. They were reacting to his
reaction. They understood what he felt.
Kovacs isn’t some rogue psychologist bent on bucking the system. A
similar test in 2011 by University of Missouri associate professor Yuyan
Luo showed
similar results,
as did studies in 2005 and 2007. So perhaps we’ve been too critical of
babies. Maybe they really do know what we’re thinking . . . which means
these monsters know exactly what they’re doing when they start screaming
in the middle of the night. Jerks.
9Babies Can Separate Speech From Gibberish
Unless you’re
Matt Smith,
chances are pretty good you can’t speak “baby.” And since most infants
aren’t voiced by Seth McFarlane, they have to jabber nonsensically while
the rest of the world laughs at their adorableness. However, while
babies can’t speak for themselves, they can definitely differentiate
between actual speech and made-up gibberish.
Athena Vouloumanos of New York University played a series of
recordings for a group of nine-month-old babies. The recordings included
a
wide array of noises,
all of which could be divided into four sections. First, babies heard a
female voice saying words like “truck” and “dinner.” Second, they heard
a parrot mimicking human speech. Third and fourth, the kids heard human
non-speech (throat clearing, whistling) and parrot sounds. While they
focused on this eclectic mix tape, the babies were shown pictures of
checkerboards, human faces, and a cup (basically, this was an
avant-garde art show).
By noting how long babies stared at the images, scientists could tell
if the kids comprehended what they were hearing. For example, when
babies heard words spoken by a human, they stared at the pictures for a
long time. They didn’t have a problem identifying the sound of a real
person. As for the human sound effects, when the babies heard coughs and
hacks, they didn’t pay any attention to the images on screen. They
could easily tell the difference between language and gibberish.
However, things got trickier when the parrot started talking. If
babies heard the bird say words like “two” or “bread” while staring at
pictures of a face or a cup, they knew they were hearing speech, even if
it wasn’t a human. But if the more human images were replaced with the
more abstract checkerboard, the babies couldn’t tell the difference
between the parrot mimicry and the parrot whistles. So basically, if you
want to play mind games with your baby, buy a bird.
8Babies Know Animals Need Organs
Animals have guts. Anybody driving down a highway in the American South
can attest to that. But when do humans first realize all creatures great
and small are packed full of intestines? Is it something we discover
for ourselves, or is it something we just know? According to researchers
at the University of Illinois, it’s hardwired into our brains. Just ask
a baby.
Professor Renee Baillargeon and graduate student Peipei Setoh believe
babies understand basic physical and psychological facts. For example,
if an infant sees something moving around by itself and responding to
its environment, then the baby assumes the object is alive. Wondering if
babies also understand basic biology, they gave toys to a group of
eight-month-olds and then broke the toys in half. If the toy seemed
self-propelled and agentive (making noises), the babies were perplexed.
They would
stare at the hollow insides for a long time, puzzled as how to moving, noisy objects could lack organs.
In a second test, babies were given items covered in fur. It’s
believed that by eight months, most kids know that “fur” indicates
“animal,” so the researchers
wrapped cans in beaver pelts
and rolled them past the babies. However, when the cans were revealed
to be empty, the infants stared and stared. Where was all the squishy
stuff? On the other hand, they weren’t surprised the stationary cans
were hollow.
Aside from being a cute experiment, Baillargeon and Setoh’s project
shed an interesting light on our history as a species. Humans probably
developed an inherent understanding of animal organs in order to stay
alive. When you’re a hunter-gatherer, it helps to know the difference
between living creatures and inanimate objects. For example, if you know
a deer has a heart, then you can spear it and eat it. If you club a
wolf in the brain, you can save yourself from becoming dinner. However,
in today’s less primitive world, the experiment can still come in useful
if you’re a bored parent looking to torture your children.
7Babies Can Sense If Their Parents Are Angry
When you’re married with kids, things can get a bit tense. However, the
next time you need to have a heated “discussion” with your spouse, you
might want to step outside. It turns out babies—even sleeping babies—can
sense if their parents are angry, and mad moms and dads might damage
their psychological development.
In 2013, researchers from the University of Oregon had a group of
mothers answer questions about how often they fought with their
significant others. After the survey, the moms put their babies to
sleep, and then the tykes were placed in an
fMRI.
As the machine whirred and banged, the babies napped while wearing
headphones. While the kids snoozed, scientists played recordings of a
male voice speaking gibberish. However, sometimes the voice was happy,
sometimes it was neutral, and sometimes it was
ticked off. All the while, scientists observed the baby’s brain activity based on their blood flow.
When the study was finished, scientists determined babies from
“vocal” families responded quite differently to the angry voice than
infants from more peaceful homes. Infants whose parents fought
frequently had a much stronger reaction to the enraged recording,
especially in areas of the brain related to stress and emotion
regulation. Even though they were asleep, the babies could still sense
hostility, and their brains responded negatively.
Though they’re not sure, psychologists worry that children exposed to parental arguing at an early age might grow up
more anxious
and stressed-out than other kids. So remember, parents, the next time
you need to exercise your vocal cords, the baby is listening.
6Babies Can Learn Songs Before They’re Born
You’ve probably seen moms who put headphones on their bellies so they
can blast Mozart at their pre-borns. While their musical experiment
might not create a wunderkind along the lines of
Amadeus, there
is some proof that listening to music is beneficial during prenatal
development. According to researchers from the University of Helsinki,
music can aid in key areas like
speech development.
Even more fascinating, the researchers discovered babies have a natural
ear for music and can remember songs they heard in utero.
In 2013, the Helsinki scientists had 12 mothers play “Twinkle,
Twinkle Little Star” for their fetuses five times a week, while a
control group of 12 expectant mothers skipped the daily music sessions.
After delivery, the moms brought the babies back for testing, and using
an
EEG,
scientists measured the infants’ brain activity while they listened to
the lullaby. Scientists found that babies who’d listened to Mozart’s
melody in the womb still recognized the song after birth. In fact, the
babies continued to recognize the song for up to four months.
It just goes to show the human brain is an amazing organ. It also
proves you should be careful what you play for your kids, or they’ll
have that awful voice stuck in their head for a long time.
5Babies Can Show Sympathy
Psychopaths aside, sympathy is one of the most basic human emotions.
Defined as “feeling of concern for others,” sympathy helps us relate to
those in pain. It drives every (legitimate) charity on the planet. And
according to researchers at Kyoto University, it’s something we start
feeling at a very young age.
In 2013, a team led by Shoji Itakura separated 40 babies into two
groups and then turned on some rather zany movies. The first group saw a
film where a malicious blue ball chased a yellow cube around the room.
Despite the cube’s attempts to escape, the ball repeatedly hit the poor
cube before
smashing it against a wall. In the second group, babies watched a similar show, only this time, the shapes never interacted with each other.
Afterward, the babies were presented with toys, a blue ball and a
yellow cube. In the second group that watched the violence-free program,
babies showed no preference for either toy. However, in the first group
that watched the vicious murder, 9 out of 10 babies chose the
victimized cube. But were the children showing sympathy for the bullied
shape? Or were they showing disdain for the bad guy?
To find out, researchers ran a second experiment. Twenty-four
additional babies watched a show where a bully shape beat up a wimpy
shape. Only this time, there was an extra character, a red cylinder that
just stood there. After the show, two groups were offered two different
sets of toys. The first group was given the villain shape and the
neutral red cylinder. The second group was offered the victim and the
red bystander. In the first group, babies overwhelmingly chose the
cylinder. However, in the second group, almost all the kids chose the
victim. Basically, even when the baddie wasn’t around, kids wanted to
play with the bullied toy. They were showing sympathy for the victim. As
for the rogue kids who chose the villains, well, they might end up in a
future Listverse article on serial killers.
4Babies Can Reason
Babies aren’t interested in philosophy. Most can’t even author a basic
paper on the difference between Plato and Aristotle. However, despite
their lackadaisical approach to the study of knowledge, Josh Tenenbaum
of MIT believes babies are actually quite skilled at reasoning. In fact,
he claims one-year-old infants are
adept at making logical assumptions about how the world works. They even show surprise when things don’t match up with their expectations.
In his experiment, Tenebaum played a video for a group of
one-year-olds that involved a container full of brightly colored balls.
Three were blue, one was red, and they were happily bouncing around when
suddenly the scientist covered the screen. While the babies’ vision was
blocked, an object was removed from the can. When the scientist stepped
away, voila—an object had disappeared.
What’s fascinating is that the babies reacted differently depending
on what vanished and how long the TV had been covered. If the screen was
blocked for 0.4 seconds and the object furthest from the can’s opening
disappeared, the babies were baffled. How on earth did the ball at the
back fall out first? However, if scientists covered the TV for two
seconds, babies weren’t surprised at all if that same object
disappeared. After all, there was plenty of time for it to roll out. The
only exception was if the missing item was the red ball because, after
all, it was different from the others.
So it seems that babies as young as one have a firm grasp on logic.
It probably won’t be long before they’re reading “Discourse on the
Method,” but let’s not put Descartes before the horse.
3Babies Understand Numbers
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who like math, and
those who hate it (this author despises it). But regardless of personal
opinion, math is a vital part of everyday life, and our understanding of
numbers separates us from every other being on the planet. While
animals can count (
monkeys can even add dots together),
only humans use symbols to represent numbers (like “two” or “2”).
However, that poses an interesting question. Is this something we learn
from our teachers, or is it knowledge we’re born with?
In 2009, Veronique Izard of Harvard decided to answer that question
by experimenting on 16 newborns, and by newborns, we’re talking babies
only 7 to 100 hours old. The test started with Izard playing recordings
of spoken syllables. For example, the babies might hear the sound
“raaaa” five times and then hear “ra” 10 times. Afterward, babies
listened to the recording while looking pictures of geometrical shapes.
The cards might show five circles or 10 triangles. Shockingly, the
majority of babies stared longer at cards displaying the
same number of shapes as syllables on the recordings. If they heard four “ras,” they’d look at the picture with four objects and so on.
Izard’s study proves that infants have an innate sense of numbers.
They can count before they even develop the ability to speak. However,
not all babies are created equal. Some kids are better at distinguishing
numbers than others, and chances are good those intelligent infants
will grow up with
better math skills. Your author was not one of those babies.
2Babies Are Self-Aware
Unless afflicted with a disorder, humans are aware of their own body in
the space around them. We understand where we are in relation to other
objects and how we interact with the things around us. But what about
babies? Are they self-aware? Do they understand the difference between
themselves and the people around them?
Hoping to find an answer, Maria Laura Filippetti of the University of
London worked with 40 newborns, ranging in age from 12 hours to four
days. Their experiment involved a TV screen, a paintbrush, and a spin on
a famous trick. Known as the rubber hand illusion, it involves stroking
a person’s hand while hiding it from view. At the same time, you have
to stroke a visible rubber hand. The simultaneous stroking tricks the
subject into thinking the rubber hand is their own. While it’s great
trick for boring parties (if you happen to have a spare prosthetic limb
lying around), Filippetti decided to tweak the illusion for her younger
audience.
Filippetti had babies watch a short film where an infant’s face was
rubbed with a paintbrush. As the kids watched the tickle torture session
on screen, Filipetti brushed the actual babies’ face as well. Sometimes
the strokes were timed to match the action onscreen, while at other
times, the strokes were delayed a few seconds. When all was said and
done, Filippetti discovered the babies were fooled
when stroked in tandem with the action on-screen.
However, when the strokes came late or when the movie was flipped
upside down, the babies knew the difference between themselves and the
kids onscreen. While the study was successful, here’s hoping the babies
don’t develop an irrational fear of paintbrushes.
1Babies Can Tell The Difference Between Angry And Friendly Dogs
Since time immemorial, there’s been an
epic war between dogs and babies.
The babies mercilessly pull dog tails and ears, and the pooches respond
with mouths full of sharp teeth. However, infants might have the upper
hand in this deadly game of kid vs. canine. Not only have they got
backup (i.e., parents), but babies are extremely good at picking up on
mutt emotions, a key tool in preventing preemptive dog attacks.
Led by Ross Florn, researchers at Brigham Young University ran an
experiment on 128 infants, ranging in age from 6 to 24 months old. These
kids, who’d previously had little or no exposure to dogs, were plopped
in front of two very different photos. One was a picture of a friendly
dog, all tongue and wagging tail, and the other was a hound from hell
with razor fangs bared. While the babies didn’t show preference for
either image at first, they perked up a bit when scientists played dog
sound effects, one happy bark and one angry bark. Each time they heard a
growl or a yap,
the babies reacted correctly, staring at the image of the corresponding dog.
What’s really interesting is that babies responded differently
according to age. For example, when scientists played an angry sound,
the six-month-olds stared at the mad mutt for a long time. On the other
hand, 24-month-olds simply looked at the correct picture for a few
seconds before moving on to something more interesting. For the older
babies, it was almost like the conclusion was so obvious that it wasn’t
worth their time. Hopefully, they’ll pay more attention if they
encounter a real canine.
