More and more research unveils the importance of parenting skills in a baby’s first year of life. As the old saying goes, experience is the best teacher and many new parents would certainly agree. The same adage may apply to infants as well, as a new study found 10 month old babies were already able to apply lessons learned.
Following this lead, assistant psychology professor and study author Jessica Sommerville sought to see if a more active approach along with hands-on training increased a baby’s understanding of another person’s goal. For the new study, 51 infants were divided into 3 groups; a training group, an observational group, and a baseline.
The babies in the training group were taught to use the crook of a plastic cane to pull a toy closer to them and were given 2 trys to see if they could do it themselves. The babies in the observational group went through a similar procedure, except they watched an adult mimic the behaviors of the infants in the training as they learned to use the cane. All the babies watched a researcher sit at a table and use the cane to pull a toy closer to them for 4 trials. Different toys were used for 2 trials, and a different cane was used for the other 2; all the babies’ observations were recorded.
The experiment was designed to establish whether infants’ paid attention to the change in the researchers’ goal of getting a new toy rather than using a new tool, according to Sommerville. The observational and baseline groups spent equal time observing the trials while the trained group spent the most, focused time- leading researchers to speculate a a greater understanding of the use of the tool by the trained group. The infants in the training group were also the most proficient at using the cane to grasp a toy.
What You Can Do
It may seem like a small step for baby-kind, but the study provides valuable insight to child development. Researchers conclude that simple observation of another’s behavior isn’t enough for babies to fully understand. It is the combination of both hands on interaction as well as first hand experience that really sends the message home for babies.
