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They may be small and not be able to hold an adult conversation, but babies are proving their collective cleverness. As soon as scientists figured out smarter ways to uncover the wee ones’ abilities, they began finding infants’ skills are more than they’re cracked up to be.
Born to Dance
Speaking of music, babies can’t seem to resist it. Not only are their ears tuned to the beats, babies can actually dance in time with them, according to a study published in 2010.
To test babies’ dancing disposition, the researchers played recordings of classical music, rhythmic beats and speech to infants, and videotaped the results. They also recruited professional ballet dancers to analyze how well the babies matched their movements to the music.
The babies moved their arms, hands, legs, feet, torsos and heads in response to the music, much more than to speech. The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest this dancing ability is innate in humans, though the researchers aren’t sure why it evolved.
Learning quickly while sleeping
Babies can apparently learn even while asleep, according to a 2010 study. In experiments with 26 sleeping infants, each just 1 to 2 days old, scientists played a musical tone followed by a puff of air to their eyes 200 times over the course of a half-hour. A network of 124 electrodes stuck on the scalp and face of each baby also recorded brain activity during the experiments. The babies rapidly learned to anticipate a puff of air upon hearing the tone, showing a fourfold increase on average in the chances of tightening their eyelids in response to the sound by the end of each session.
As newborns spend most of their time asleep, this newfound ability might be crucial to rapidly adapt to the world around them and help to ensure their survival, researchers said. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Know their p’s and q’s
When we say babies do this and that even “before they learn to talk,” we’re obviously not including baby talk and other language smarts.
In a study published in the journal Science, researchers had 36 infants watch silent videos of three bilingual French-English speakers reciting sentences. After being trained to become comfortable with a speaker reciting a sentence in one language, babies ages 4 months and 6 months spent more time looking at a speaker reciting a sentence in a different language —demonstrating that they could tell the difference between the two.
“Newborns can be said to be ‘intelligent’ in that they have the ability to almost effortlessly learn any of the world’s languages,” psychologist George Hollich of Purdue University said. Some of Hollich’s research shows that babies start to understand grammar by the age of 15 months, processing grammar and words simultaneously.
Judge Character Well
Pegging another person as helpful or harmful is crucial when choosing friends. And that ability starts early. Kiley Hamlin of Yale University showed both 6- and 10-month-olds a puppet show of sorts with anthropomorphized shapes, in which one shape helped another climb a hill. In another scenario a third shape pushed the climber down. The little ones then got to choose which shape they preferred. For both age groups, most babies chose the helper shapes. This character-judging ability could be baby’s first step in the formation of morals, Hamlin speculated. The work was published in 2007 in the journal Nature.
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或許他們年紀尚幼，還不能像大人那樣交談，但是這些寶寶們個個都證明著他們的絕頂聰明。科學家們一找到更加高明的方法來發(fā)現這些小寶貝們的各種能力，就發(fā)現其實寶寶們會的東西比人們夸贊的還要多。
生而善舞
說到音樂，嬰兒似乎無法抗拒。2010年發(fā)表的一項研究表明，嬰兒不僅耳朵能辨別音樂的節(jié)奏，而且身體也能夠與之呼應、隨之起舞。
為了檢測嬰兒的舞蹈傾向，研究者們分別給嬰兒播放古典音樂、節(jié)奏感強烈的音樂和演說，并將他們的反應拍攝下來。他們還請專業(yè)的芭蕾舞演員來分析寶寶們動作與音樂合拍的準確程度。
與演說相比，寶貝們對音樂的反應更加強烈，他們隨著音樂揮著胳膊和小手、蹬起小腿、晃動身子和小腦袋。發(fā)表于《美國國家科學院院刊》的研究表明，這種舞蹈的能力是人類與生俱來的，不過研究者們尚不能確定為什么這種能力后天會變弱。
睡眠當中快速學習
2010年的一項研究顯示，寶貝們顯然在睡著的時候也能學習。該研究對26名出生只有一兩天的熟睡中的嬰兒進行實驗；在歷時30分鐘的實驗過程中，科學家們給嬰兒每放一個樂音，就往其眼睛上吹口氣，該過程重復200次。分布在嬰兒頭皮和臉上的124個電極網記錄下實驗過程中嬰兒的腦部活動。嬰兒們很快就能在聽到樂音后預知到隨后的吹氣；到實驗結束階段，嬰兒們聽到樂聲后就閉緊眼皮的或然性增加了四倍。
研究者們說，由于新生嬰兒絕大部分時間都在睡眠中，嬰兒們這項新近被發(fā)現的能力或許對于他們適應環(huán)境，幫助他們確保生存下來至關重要。本項研究發(fā)表于《美國國家科學院院刊》。
了解他們的語言
當我們說嬰兒“在學會說話之前”就會這個或者那個的時候，顯然沒有把寶寶的語言和寶寶們其他的語言天賦包括在內。
在發(fā)表于《科學》雜志的一項研究中，研究者們讓36名嬰兒觀看三個英法雙語者背誦句子的默片。當經過訓練習慣了一個說話者用一種語言背誦句子之后，4個月和6個月大的嬰兒在觀看說話者用另一種語言背誦句子時用時更長——表明他們能夠區(qū)分這兩種不同的語言。
“新生兒可以被稱為‘聰明’，在于他們能夠幾乎不費吹灰之力地學習世界上的任何語言。”美國普渡大學的心理學家喬治﹒霍利奇如是說。他的部分研究表明，嬰兒在15個月大時就開始理解語法——他們對語法和單詞的加工同時進行。
能夠判別人的好壞
擇友的時候，判別某個人會給自己帶來幫助還是傷害很重要；人們在很小的時候就具備這種本領了。耶魯大學的吉雷﹒漢姆林給6個月和10個月大的嬰兒看了一場木偶戲，戲中的小人具有不同的性格：一個小人幫助另一個小人爬山；而在另一個場景中，又有一個小人把爬上山的小人推了下去。然后這些嬰兒來推選他們喜歡的小人；兩個年齡組的大多數寶寶們都選了那個幫助別人的小人。漢姆林指出，這種識別好人和壞人的能力可以是寶貝們道德觀形成的第一步。這項研究于2007年發(fā)表在《自然》雜志上。
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