Ever wondered how a baby thinks? The Scientist in the Crib describes the efforts and experiments of developmental psychologists who want to figure out just what that little binky-sucking cherub is thinking. Scientists started taking babies seriously only about 30 or 40 years ago. Up until then, psychologists (if they thought about babies at all) thought children were blank slates who knew nothing, just a crying carrot in the crib.
Turns out that babies are born with many assumptions, many of which are wrong, and with powerful learning abilities that allow them to largely put their world in order by the time they're just three years old. The title is also the conclusion of many developmental psychologists who study babies -- babies are like scientists. They have ideas; they perform experiments; they change their ideas based on the experiments. For example, babies think if they can't see something, then it doesn't exist. Objects disappear forever if you cover them with a cloth. Babies experiment with this idea, and learn it is wrong. Things exist even if they're out of sight! Imagine that! This amazing discovery is the reason why the game peekaboo is so exciting for a little one.
Babies are also continually experimenting on adults. Babies are born knowing that they are somehow like adults, and that they should imitate adults. A psychologist tested lots of newborns and discovered that if you stick out your tongue at a new baby, the new baby sticks his tongue out at you. (Yes, your tax dollars at work, I'm sure.) But it takes a scientist to tell us how profound that is. The newborn with his tongue out: (1) recognizes the adult face as something similar enough to his own that he can imitate it; (2) knows where his tongue is (there are no mirrors in the womb); and (3) knows how to stick it out.
Babies learn from adults because they are born wanting to imitate adults. Then, when they're about two, babies learn something terrible -- adults don't want the baby to do everything the baby wants to do. Gasp! This shocking discovery is the impetus behind the "terrible twos." The baby is trying to see just why mom doesn't want him to dump out the rice, and what happens if he dumps it out anyway. Mom is the lab rat in the baby's experiment of "do people really think differently than I do?"
The book is an easy read, and contains a lot of humor. You can't really write a book about how babies learn without funny anecdotes, and the authors throw in several.
Finding out how babies think and learn provides a lot of insight into how adults think and learn also. In fact, it isn't babies who think like scientists. It's scientists who think like babies. The scientific method of developing a hypothesis, experimenting with that hypothesis, and drawing a conclusion based on the experiment is one we've all used since birth. It's the way we found out about the world. As the authors note, the adult scientist peering into the crib meets the curious gaze of the infant scientist peering out of the crib.
3 comments:
I bet that it is a fascinating read - especially with your own two little lab rats!! The fact that they didn't think baies even thought anything 30 years ago tells me where the "you can't spoil a baby under six months of age" came from!!
Fascinating info!
Sounds like a good book. I remember hearing that babies will imitate you if you stick your tongue out, I tried it when the twins were babies and neither of them would...sigh...oh well ;)
Mauri, I told my sister about the tongue thing, and she tried it with Benji. I laughed my head off as she kept trying and trying to get him to stick his tongue out. Benji wouldn't stick his tongue out at her either.
Post a Comment