Babies: My thoughts on their thoughts

With the articles that we read this week the main question was if babies could think or not. In the past fifty years, there has been an increase in the amount of research that has gone in to figure out this difficult question.

Since one can't normally go up to an eighteen month old and ask them what they are thinking about or have them answer a question verbally, the best way to go about it is to test it with body language, more specifically, eye movement and pupil dilation.

A Time article focused on eye movement and pupil dilation where infants were tested for their ability to notice a difference in something such as the color of a train being the same going in a circular track through a tunnel until, of course, it changed color in the tunnel. The infants' pupil dilations were recorded to show that the infants' eyes dilated when a change occurred, or something unusual happened.

This shows that babies are thinking, as they notice something with their eye dilation to support this. The question is-what babies are thinking when they see this strange occurrence, whether it is something as complex as understanding it to be an impossibility that the train could change colors in the tunnel, or simply that they thought this was a novel event with a color change.

Due to a lack of object permanence, which is when one can recognize that something that is still in existence even when it is not visible, the infant thinks that there is a blue train and then when it changes color that there is a green train. They cannot yet understand that the blue train changed into a green train but, can understand the event of a blue train and the event of a green train which does show that they are thinking.

Angela Saini introduced a point that there was an increase in women in this field of study. In class we spoke about why it could that there has been this increased interest in discovering how babies think. With the increase in the research there was also an increase in women researchers in this field. I think that this is not a coincidence as many mothers could feel more at ease with their baby being tested on if they were being tested by a researcher that was also a mother. With the typically natural nurturing instincts of a women, the babies would natural feel more calm as the researcher would better know how to keep the baby happy, especially if she were to have a child of her own.

 A TED talk video with Child Development psychologist, Alison Gopnik described another interesting point in child development compared to other baby animals; that humans have a longer period of childhood where they are nurtured more so than any other species. Gopnik claims that this is the reason why babies are so bright and how they can develop a higher level of thinking sooner. It makes sense since infancy is where the brain develops the most so if we have more time to finish, it can increase in its complexity.

Languages are a great example of a child's learning capabilities. Children are like sponges that absorb information quickly and effectively when taught a second language. Their brain growth increases exponentially until as old as the age of five, from then the brain develops at a steadier pace of learning, but they are still actively thinking.

Gopnik also claims that during this time that with their increased active thinking, that there is increased creativity. With children being so open to new experiences before the effects of stress and judgement set in, children can openly think about what ever they want to think, how ever they wish to think it. This openness in thought could lead to great ideas that adults, with their experience and more complex knowledge could use to benefit others.

Children are actively thinking about thousands of things at all ages, I think its just more of a question of how deep of thinkers are they and at what point do their thoughts become more complex.

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