It is the
norm to believe that one must first know language in order to be able to
reason. However, a recent study proves this case wrong. A study just recently
published to Science suggests that
the ability to think logically does not depend on language as showed in
infants. An article entitled “Babies Think Logically Before They Can Talk” by
Bret Stetka on Scientific American explains
the study’s findings.
Several
scientists from European institutions studied infants who have not yet learned
language or have started to speak. They showed the infants distinct objects,
such as a dinosaur and a flower, then covered the items. The infants were
showed an animation where the dinosaur was removed to reveal just the flower
remaining. In some instances, however, the flower would disappear and instead
there would be two dinosaurs. The experimenters used eye-tracking to follow the
infants’ vision patterned. This revealed that the infants started significantly
longer on the instances where the unexpected dinosaur appeared. This finding
suggests that the infants suspected something wasn’t right and that they were
confused. Also noted was the dilation of the pupils when unexpected outcomes
occurred which is known to happen to adults when given difficult logical
problems, further proving the researchers’ point.
This study
can raise a few questions such as what the next step is. Are we born with
rational tendencies and logical thinking? Or are infants learning while
observing, even before they are able to articulate thoughts? The lead study
author, Nicoló Cesana-Arlotti, plans to further study how the logic represented
in the infants differs to logic used after speech and verbal development.
Source:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/babies-think-logically-before-they-can-talk/
This was a really interesting article, Sarah! It reminded me of another article on how a baby can read and respond to facial emotions at such an early age - such that when their mother smiles, they smile back. They are also able to distinguish between their mother's and a stranger's face even a few hours after they are born. It is interesting to see how babies develop these schemas, and can understand logic and reason. It makes me wonder about the hereditary evolution of babies, and as if babies by generation are getting smarter.
ReplyDeleteThis Article is fascinating and poses so many more questions about innate learning skills in infants. It also give us more insight into the brain and the development of the recognition and logical analysis parts of it. The study also reminded me of the experiment, where they tested babies recognition while they were still in the womb. They would have mothers read a story to their fetus many times throughout gestation. Then, once the child was born, the researchers tested the child’s preferences. They had the mother read the story to them, a stranger read the story to them and then the mother and a stranger read different stories. They found that the infant preferred the mother to the stranger but even more so they found that the child preferred the familiar story even if read by a stranger compared to the unfamiliar story. This proves that infants can recognize and have preference before language development begins. Babies thinking logically as proven by this study and the one in your article show that logically thinking may be an innate process. Logic is suggested to be something instilled in humans and can be present as soon as the brain develops. This study you present opens up the door to continue testing this theory and dive deeper into the innate processes the human brain possess.
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