Spending time with a toddler is truly an enriching experience. May not be so rich if the baby is yours- coz you have to handle when the baby poops or pees. Still, it is amazing to observe what babies go through each passing second. According to some scientists, the very answer to the most complicated questions on human beings can be acquired through these cute and cuddly pooping machines.
It is hard to understand what goes on inside a baby’s brain- we can’t offer the baby a crossword puzzle to solve and it is quite a bit difficult to subject babies to advanced medical testing procedures, even with the co-operation from parents. It would have been helpful if the babies could at least speak a language, but they don’t. So, how do psychologists and other scientists measure different aspects of a baby’s behaviour? Well, there are ways to get this done. If you ask me, the most brilliant among psychologists are the ones who work in the field of developmental psychology, especially those who work with infants. Some of the popular methods to measure the intelligence and other cognitive aspects of babies will surely make us ‘google’ search the brain behind them.
But, what do these studies tell us? Aren’t babies as dumb as we thought they were? In less offensive words (to babies, in case they understand this), are babies smarter than we think?
Our babies’ brains develop at an amazing rate — they fully double in size from birth until one. And a baby’s brain has around 1,000 trillion synapses (or a quadrillion, for all you math majors), which is twice as many as a typical adult has. This amazing rate growth in babies isn’t just confined in their skulls. As a matter of fact, babies can grow in height about half an inch in just 24 hours.
You might have heard that babies are good at picking up languages. Actually, babies are capable of speaking in any language known to humankind, whereas after you cross the 6-months infantile period, this ability is lost forever. If you pay close attention, babies can babble syllables that adults can’t pronounce. The next time you come across a 6-month old baby, try to repeat the syllables they babble. Chances are that you’ll be beaten by the baby. Babies are also experts in identifying different languages. Even if you stuff words from a different language in your normal speech, babies will see that there is something wrong. So, it doesn’t matter if you use different languages to communicate with your baby, he/she is smart enough to figure it out.
It has long been established that babies show no signs of emotional intelligence- that they are self-centred beings. To be true, the cognitive development stages as described by Jean Piaget are among the very first topics that a Psychology grad student is exposed to and it clearly states that ego-centrism is a characteristic feature of children till they turn at least 6. But, a recent study at Brigham Young University found that babies are able to detect changes in the mood of Beethoven’s music. The same research lab found that babies can match angry dog barks and friendly dog sounds with corresponding photos of dogs displaying threatening or friendly body language.
Conventional wisdom holds that babies don’t make the link between objects and their names until the baby is at least a year old. But it turns out they begin to understand at about six months of age, long before they can speak. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania showed babies images of body parts and had parents ask them questions such as, “Where are the eyes?” The babies looked at the correct body part longer than any other, suggesting that they know the meaning of the word.
These are just a few examples of how a baby is smarter than we think. Yes, if you cover your face with your palms, they’d think that you are erased from existence (object impermanence). But you can’t entirely judge a baby on the basis of this feature along. Babies are more than mere lumps of adorable coo-coos and gaa-gaas.
If you really want to dwell into the topic deep, you can go through the Netflix documentary series- ‘Babies’. Or if you just want to embrace the little one as an innocent little human being, you are good to go. Consider this a warning, be careful the next time you speak dirty in front of your baby, they might just understand…
