10 Surprising Things Babies Can Do

Human infants are helpless. At first they can't even support the weight of their own heads. Crawling and walking take months to master. Compare this with the sprightly newborns of other mammals, such as kittens and foals, up and about within an hour of their birth. There are several theories as to why human development is so protracted - among them that this extra time is required for the human brain to develop. This post side-steps such debates and focuses on 10 studies hinting at the surprising abilities of babies aged up to one year. The research digested below suggests the infant mind is far more sophisticated than you might imagine:Babies can meet a person once and remember them for years We begin with a study in which 3-year-olds watched two videos shown side by side, each featuring a different researcher, one of whom they'd met once, two years earlier. The children spent longer looking at the video showing the researcher they hadn't met. This is consistent with young children's usual tendency to look longer at things that are unfamiliar, and it suggests they remembered the researcher they'd met once, when they were aged just one. Of course the phenomenon of infantile amnesia means these early long-term memories will likely be lost in subsequent years. Babies can tell a human from a zombie (or a monkey)Six-month-old and 12-month-old babies viewed pictures of cartoon human faces. Some of the faces looked creepy because they had zombie-style goggle eyes. Just like ad...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs