What can babies up to a year: 8 facts

They drool, mumble something and constantly sleep. If you follow the way your baby’s day goes by, you might think that he doesn’t have enough cognitive or emotional abilities to understand a lot of what is happening around him.

But if you take a closer look, you can see that the child is really very focused on finding out what the world around him is like. The kid systematically analyzes objects and people, even builds some hypotheses, and then tries to test them through certain experiments. If the data does not satisfy the child, he reconsiders his needs and continues to study them.

The more scientists try to recognize the processes of interaction of babies with the world around them, the more wise they seem to be children. These eight facts collected by a psychologist Gabriella Principe from Charleston College in South Carolina may surprise you with the unique talents that kids have.

1. Kids remember the earliest experience

As part of one experiment, future mothers were asked to read the tale Cat in the Hat loudly twice a day during the last six weeks of pregnancy. Shortly after birth, their children showed particular interest in this particular work, giving it preference over other fairy tales for children. This was confirmed by the intensity with which they were applied to the nipple at the time of reading various tales. Even more noteworthy is that the children showed interest in the fairy tale, regardless of whether their mother read the “Kota in the hat” or the other kid’s mother.

2. Kids distinguish between good and evil

By the age of six months, babies can judge the correctness or abnormality of their behavior, as well as distinguish between what is good and what is bad, like most adults. To discover these abilities, the researchers showed the children a puppet doll that pushed the ball up the hill. Then another doll either helped first or hindered her. Later, when the children were offered a choice of playing with one of the dolls, the kids preferred the assistant doll. Some children even deliberately repelled the "evil" doll, which all the time interfered with the "good." And even three-month babies who are not yet able to play with dolls, with a glance, showed approval in relation to the doll they liked. This suggests that, by the 12 week, babies can evaluate behavior.

3. Kids always strive to help

When one-year-old children watched as someone tried to open the closet door, although his hands were busy with something, or trying to reach an object that was beyond his reach, the kids spontaneously distracted from what they were at that time. engaged, and tried to help a stranger. That is, the babies themselves tried to pick up the object and help the person open the door. However, keep in mind: there is evidence that rewards for helping children only hinder, and not contribute to the development of these qualities in the future. When older children are given material rewards or simply praised for their help, they are less likely to feel the need to help others. So think twice before clapping your little helper!

4. Kids perceive statistics

Ten-month babies took part in the experiment with two transparent containers. The first one was filled with pink and black toys in a three-to-one ratio (12 pink and 4 black). The other, on the contrary, is “one to three” (12 pink and 36 black). The researcher took out one toy from each container, holding them so that the children could not see what color the toys were and put them in an opaque container. And the children were drawn to the first container, because the likelihood that there would be a pink toy was higher. It turns out that children are well-trained statistically!

5. Kids learn from surprises

Surprises allow children to learn and even try to figure out something previously unknown. This trend was confirmed in a study in which 11-month-old babies observed balls that behaved in predictable and unpredictable ways. For example, children saw a ball rolling down a surface. In the first case, it rested against an obstacle in the form of a wall, and in the other, the impression was created that the ball was rolling further, through the wall. And it was more interesting for the children to deal with the “magic” ball, which was able to surprise them with non-standard actions. If you want to encourage your own child's curiosity, know that surprises aren't just for the holidays.

6. Kids need attention

When the mother does not react emotionally to the actions of the baby, he immediately tries to get her attention again with some sounds or a smile. But if mom continues to ignore the child, he will start crying or screaming so that she looks at him. Such actions clearly show how multifaceted is the emotional perception of the kids what is happening with them in their daily interaction with mothers.

7. Kids are good at people

You know that children can imitate very well. But you may not know that babies will not imitate anyone. Starting from about their first birthday, they automatically evaluate others and will not imitate those who, in their opinion, are not credible. This was demonstrated by the following example: in the eyes of babies, adults looked into the drawer, expressing some excitement, and then asked the children to repeat their action. The fact is, for some children there was a toy in the boxes, and for others - there was nothing there. Judging by the results, when adults asked the children to repeat their actions in the next task, they only responded to requests from “reliable” adults.

8. Kids little versed in physics

Child psychologists who are engaged in age psychology regularly come up with certain tricks for children. Either solid bodies hover somewhere in the air, or they pass through walls and disappear to reappear in a different place. Kids watch these processes more closely than scenes in which everything is monotonous, and the laws of physics are not violated. The little ones understand that objects obey the laws of gravity, and that they cannot move through the space occupied by other objects.

“Forum” wrote earlier that scientists were able to explain why adults don't remember their own childhood, especially the first three years of life. As it turned out, childhood memories have an age, and new brain cells completely erase old ones.