Sun 30 Dec 2007
Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY
Have you ever had a baby look at you like you’re a complete idiot?
It might not be your imagination, after all. New research indicates that babies are more than capable of forming critical judgements of adults, particularly their parents :
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Interpersonal interaction is a major survival feature of the human species and so it’s not surprising that we come hard-wired with the mental power to track relationships. The big news is that we also start very early to track how others play out those rules, even when the interaction has nothing to do with us.
Babies have far more social smarts than we give them credit for.
Babies are also adept social butterflies, born with the rules of engagement etched on their brains.
Pediatrician T. Barry Brazleton has shown that there is a certain set rhythm to the social interactions of mothers and babies. They engage (what we often call “play”), then the baby cuts out and has down time, and then they start up again. The baby is designed to participate in this inter-personal tango (and so are adults), and mothers quickly know that something is wrong if the baby doesn’t connect with her.
Psychologist J. Kiley Hamlin and colleagues of Yale University recently showed 6- to 10-month old babies various social situations using triangles, squares and circles that play acted helping or hindering each other. The babies clearly disliked the objects that didn’t help out. The psychologists concluded that babies are good judges of character, even when they’re not directly involved in the action.
This research is a surprise because no one thought babies were paying that much attention to the acts of others. And no one realized baby judgments were so harsh.
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