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Journalism of Courage
Listen to these experts talk about how a baby’s mind works.
As adorable as a baby’s actions might seem to be, adults often pass them off as mere acts of innocence. We assume that babies only imitate what they see around themselves. But did you know that even their little brains are capable of thinking and making decisions? Do you really know what goes on in their minds? These TED Talks will help you understand how a baby’s mind functions.
A baby’s thought-process is generally assumed to be irrational and illogical. Alison Gopnik, a child development psychologist, however, debunks the idea by showing how a baby’s mind, in some ways, is similar to that of scientists. A baby’s mind has perspective, which also helps them identify behavioral differences in others. “The baby’s brain seems to be the most powerful learning computer on the planet,” says Gopnik.
Patricia Kuhl, a professor of speech and hearing sciences, talks about how the ability to learn a language is the maximum during the first six to eight months, which then declines systematically as one grows older. “The modern tools of neuroscience are demonstrating to us that what’s going on up there (a baby’s mind) is nothing short of rocket science,” she says. Kuhl explains how babies possess the remarkable ability to understand and distinguish between every sound in the world, which they try to comprehend to learn their language. Adults, on the other hand, can discriminate sounds of their own language but not of the others.
In her talk, Laura Schulz, a professor of cognitive science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, decodes how “children learn so much from so little so quickly”. Schulz shows experiments conducted on two 15-month-old babies to prove how their minds make logical inferences in a given situation.
Also Read: 5 TED Talk shows every parent needs to watch
The author of Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, Annie Murphy Paul, talks about how learning begins long before preschool; it begins inside the womb. The process of learning for the foetus begins with the sound of their mother’s voice, which reverberates through her body. Once the baby is born, it recognises the mother’s voice and prefers listening to it.
