While at the age of eight months, children do not speak and do not yet know how to use tools, they already understand their role.
- In the study, when eight-month-old babies were startled, their pupils dilated.
- The infants were able to grasp the role of the tool, in this case the ball, even without apparent causality.
- So, that is why understanding new technologies is not a problem for them.
“The cognitive ability to understand tools is present in young infants, even if they produce arbitrary and opaque effects, that is, without apparent causality (e.g. touch screens).” This is what French scientists recently revealed.
Pupillary dilation indicates that babies are surprised
As part of a study, they wanted to determine at what age the notion of a tool develops. For this, they recruited 120 babies aged eight months. The team observed variations in the children’s pupil size as they watched four films, which lasted a few seconds. These showed the movement of a ball, thrown by a man then replaced by an inanimate sphere (another ball), colliding or not with a box. The ball changed color upon collision or without being hit by the round object.
According to the authors, toddlers had greater pupil dilation, reporting more surprise when the ball stopped before hitting the box than when it hit the cube. This suggests that the infants inferred that the cause of the color change was the contact between the ball and the cube. “These effects disappear if we replace the man who initially threw the ball with something else, for example another ball. (…) For babies, it is the man who will cause the color change with the ball, he will act on the box by means of the ball, that is to say by means of a tool”explained, to Radio FranceJean-Rémy Hochmann, author of the work published in the journal PNAS.
Infants quickly understand new technologies
The results showed that eight-month-old infants were capable of understanding complex event structures, involving an intentional agent (here the man) causing change with a tool. Researchers therefore believe that babies are able to grasp the concept of tools before being able to speak and use them. Another conclusion: opaque tools, like new technologies, are not a problem for them.
