The Super Start ProjectResearch and Theory
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The Super Start ProjectResearch and Theory
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For a quick review of the research, see the Research Summary page.
Please Note: The fact that someone's research is referenced in no way implies their endorsement of Super Start. Also please remember that only the source documents should be treated as authoritative. Rather than take my word for anything, please go to the source. Please contact me if you have been improperly quoted or taken out of context and wish a correction to be made, or wish to have a reference to your work removed. Of course the same goes if you wish to have a research reference added.
Can an infant actually learn and remember? As a matter of fact, in the book THE BRAIN (also a series on PBS and a series of tapes -- see your library), Dr. Restak suggests that the possible reason most of us don't remember our earliest childhood is simply because the memory cells that allow us to do so are not there yet. In THE INFANT MIND, he discusses the idea of two types of memory. One is a type of memory located in the part of the brain that develops early. He calls it memory in the "wide sense." It is a kind of memory that does not associate time or place with acquired knowledge. We just know something; we don't remember how, when or where we got the information. It is this type of memory that might appear to be innate, even though it was produced by stimulation from the outside world.
About this type of memory Dr. Restak says, "Through the use of laboratory measures of an infant's physical responsiveness, neuroscientists have demonstrated that memory in the 'wide sense' is present probably from birth. Indeed, the infant can learn, modify reactions, and exhibit surprise when something new occurs -- none of these responses would be possible if the infant didn't in some way remember previous experiences." (THE INFANT MIND, 151)
And from an article by Gail Rosenblum at the Sesame Street Parents web site, "What do babies know, and what are they capable of learning? These questions have always fascinated parents, and now there are some important new answers. Scientists are discovering that newborns--once thought to enter the world as blank slates onto which a lifetime of experiences was inscribed--have brains as sophisticated as the most powerful supercomputer, wired with a mind-boggling capacity for knowledge. Research has also shown that in the earliest months of life, a dazzling amount of brain development continues to occur."
Ms. Rosenblum goes on to say, "But perhaps the most significant news concerns the impact of a baby's environment on the development of his brain. It all starts with a series of bulges on a four-week-old embryo's neural tube. From there, billions of brain cells, called neurons, develop throughout the pregnancy. Connections between these cells, called synapses, also multiply rapidly during the nine months of gestation, forming the physical maps that allow learning to occur."
Ms.Rosenblum reports that newborns demonstrate significant capability very early: "At birth, infants can feel, hear, and see (although vision is somewhat blurred). Within days they are able to recognize their mother's smell, and within weeks they can discriminate between her voice and the voices of others. Synapse formation continues at a rapid rate, allowing the baby to accomplish ever more complex tasks, such as forming her first sounds."
And Dr. Restak reports on research which shows that even newborns can be taught: "Place a pair of earphones on a newborn baby and that baby will soon learn to suck in a pattern so as to hear her mother's voice over the earphones (if she sucks at a different rate the voice disappears or is replaced by the voice of another person). Soon the baby learns under such conditions how to maintain her mother's voice via suitable sucking. The newborn will also suck in rhythm in order to hear the sound of the human heart. She had heard the heart for several months in the womb, had gotten used to it, wants to hear it repeated endlessly, and so will learn to suck in a pattern the experimenter fancies in order to hear those sounds again. (THE INFANT MIND, 175) This is learning by means of operant conditioning. (see a definition of operant conditioning from The University of Wurzburg)
And he confirms that they prefer the sound of the mother's voice over other sounds: "The newborn will turn its head toward the human voice (preferring a female over a male); it will suck in a burst-pause rhythm to the sound of its mother's voice (whereas a pure tone of equivalent pitch elicits a steady, monotonous rhythm, as if the baby recognizes the lack of 'information' conveyed by a tone compared to the richness of the human voice); it will stare at a picture or drawing of the human face; it prefers milk smells and breast smells to mere sugar water, and it can separate human milk from cow's milk formula (via altered sucking patterns)" (THE INFANT MIND, 181)
Dr. Restak says that "Virtually all of the neurons in the human brain are present at birth." (THE INFANT MIND, 1) We show up ready to go with about 100 billion of them. They grow at the rate of 250,000 per minute during gestation! But he also says, "Fifteen to twenty years after birth is the accepted period during which the human brain continues to develop. No new neurons grow after birth but plenty of new connections, synapses, happen between and among the neurons. The increase in brain weight reflects this increase in the complexity of neuronal connections. In a cat eight days old the typical neuron may make a few hundred synapses. A month later that figure has jumped to thirteen thousand. And here, you must remember, we're speaking of a mere cat." (THE INFANT MIND, 18)
A human's brain out performs that of any animal many times over. That is due in part to the fact that it actually reaches full development later than an animal's brain. It does so because there is nowhere near enough genetic code information to pre-wire all of the human brain's "circuits." The only possible source for the rest is from the establishment of connections in response to outside stimulation. From the Executive Summary on page ix of RETHINKING THE BRAIN (one of the best overviews around about the most recent research -- it's by the Families and Work Institute and a copy can be ordered at the Families and Work Institute web site): "A father comforts a crying newborn. A mother plays peekaboo with her ten-month-old. A child care provider reads to a toddler. And in a matter of seconds, thousands of cells in these children's growing brains respond. Some brain cells are 'turned on,' triggered by this particular experience. Many existing connections among brain cells are strengthened. At the same time, new connections are formed, adding a bit more definition and complexity to the intricate circuitry that will remain largely in place for the rest of these children's lives." And from page 2: "'Beeboo,' she says. 'Peekaboo,' her mother answers, spreading one hand in front of her face and trying to change her diaper with the other. 'Beebeebeebeebee,' she sings, waving her arms excitedly 'Peekaboo, I see you. There's my baby.' And in a matter of seconds, thousands of cells in this child's growing brain respond. Some brain cells are 'turned on,' triggered by this particular experience. Many existing connections among brain cells are strengthened. At the same time, new connections are formed, adding a bit more definition and complexity to the intricate circuitry that will remain largely in place for the rest of her life." And from page 37 of RETHINKING THE BRAIN: "Scientists have learned that different regions of the cortex increase in size when they are exposed to stimulating conditions, and that the longer the exposure, the more they grow. Stimulation enlarges the number of dendrites in each neuron, creating larger 'dendrite trees' and thickening cortical cells. Research bears out that an enriched environment can boost the number of synapses that children form. Studies of young adults indicate about 15 percent variability in brain metabolism, which appears to correspond to the different amounts of energy needed to maintain varying numbers of synapses. Researchers believe that most of this variation reflects early experiences."
Early growth is phenomenal. A baby's brain doubles in size in the first year! That's due largely to the number of synaptic connections made for physical motor control functions, basic intellectual and emotional functioning, and in response to environmental stimulation. As it says in The Amazing Infant Brain , "Babies are born with billions of brain cells, many more than they have at age three and nearly twice as many as they have as adults. During the first months of life, connections between these cells, called synapses, multiply rapidly to 1,000 trillion, forming the structures that allow learning to occur." (that was from Rochelle Sharpe of The Wall Street Journal, 1995) "The number of connections could easily go up or down by 25 percent or more, depending upon whether a child grows up in an enriched environment."(by Ron Kotulak, cited in "Unlocking the Mind," Chicago Tribune, 1993) "Research findings from the behavioral sciences to biology and neurology now leaves no doubt that the first three years of life are crucial." "The foundations for lifelong learning are laid. And children learn to trust and begin to acquire the self-confidence that encourages them to keep learning." (by Joan Beck, Chicago Tribune, August 27, 1995) And from the Executive Summary on page x of RETHINKING THE BRAIN: "It is during the first three years of life that the vast majority of synapses is produced. The number of synapses increases with astonishing rapidity until about age three and then holds steady throughout the first decade of life. A child's brain becomes super-dense, with twice as many synapses as it will eventually need. Brain development is, then, a process of pruning."
Consider what it says in Fertile Minds a TIME on line article by Madeleine Nash, about just how malleable the brain of a very young child is: "Scientists have found that the brain during the first years of life is so malleable that very young children who suffer strokes or injuries that wipe out an entire hemisphere can still mature into highly functional adults. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly clear that well-designed preschool programs can help many children overcome glaring deficits in their home environment. With appropriate therapy, say researchers, even serious disorders like dyslexia may be treatable. While inherited problems may place certain children at greater risk than others, says Dr. Harry Chugani, a pediatric neurologist at Wayne State University in Detroit, that is no excuse for ignoring the environment's power to remodel the brain. 'We may not do much to change what happens before birth, but we can change what happens after a baby is born,' he observes."
As Ms. Nash says later in the article, "When a baby is born, it can see and hear and smell and respond to touch, but only dimly. The brain stem, a primitive region that controls vital functions like heartbeat and breathing, has completed its wiring. Elsewhere the connections between neurons are wispy and weak. But over the first few months of life, the brain's higher centers explode with new synapses. And as dendrites and axons swell with buds and branches like trees in spring, metabolism soars. By the age of two, a child's brain contains twice as many synapses and consumes twice as much energy as the brain of a normal adult."
Ms. Nash then goes on to describe the role of stimulation in the growth of the brain: "What wires a child's brain, say neuroscientists--or rewires it after physical trauma--is repeated experience. Each time a baby tries to touch a tantalizing object or gazes intently at a face or listens to a lullaby, tiny bursts of electricity shoot through the brain, knitting neurons into circuits as well defined as those etched onto silicon chips. The results are those behavioral mileposts that never cease to delight and awe parents. Around the age of two months, for example, the motor-control centers of the brain develop to the point that infants can suddenly reach out and grab a nearby object. Around the age of four months, the cortex begins to refine the connections needed for depth perception and binocular vision. And around the age of 12 months, the speech centers of the brain are poised to produce what is perhaps the most magical moment of childhood: the first word that marks the flowering of language."
Dr. Restak explains that at about the same time the more common type of memory, called memory in the "strict sense," where a person is capable of association with time or place, comes into being with the development of higher levels of the brain. "The time frame in which the two types of memory systems develop (in the 'wide' and 'strict' sense, respectively) can be correlated with brain development. The amygdala and frontal lobes are known to be important in memory; damage to either structure in adults leads to a greater or lesser degree of memory impairment. They are also known to develop relatively late in infancy. Memory in the 'strict' sense must await, therefore, the development of the amygdala and frontal lobes. Before the time when these structures are functioning, only early memory in the 'wide' sense is possible. With the passage of time and the maturation of these structures (at about ten months of age) memory in the more common sense of the term appears." (THE INFANT MIND, 152)
So babies get the capability for some things early and for other things a little later. It looks like important capabilities aren't in place for almost a year. What's intriguing however, is the possibility that even very young babies can learn in the "wide" sense and thus attain what will appear to be innate knowledge. Super Start is designed to take advantage of a baby's apparent ability to learn basic information very early.
More evidence of that ability is reported by Gail Rosenblum in Baby Brainpower from Sesame Street Parents: "If you carefully observe your baby, you will probably notice that by about three or four months, she has a memory. If you show her a ball or toy, for example, then place it behind your back, you'll see that her eyes follow your action. She seems to remember the object and know where it is. These kinds of observations by parents are borne out by research.", and by 13 months babies "can remember certain events for at least eight months after they occur, notes Patricia Bauer, Ph.D., associate professor of developmental psychology at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis."
The research suggests that babies are not born as blank slates as people used to think, but have significant capabilities that enable them to learn. Professor Karen Wynn's research "suggests that an initial core of numerical competence is part of the inherent structure of the human mind." and that "... infants perceive an external world composed of distinct objects, persons, and other individual entities, and come equipped with systems of knowledge enabling them to reason about these entities." Professor Wynn's Yale University Infant Cognition Laboratory
Among the aspects of external objects babies are capable of acquiring are sound patterns. The Research and Policy Resource Center, Georgia Department of Education quotes Patricia Kuhl, a professor and the chairwoman of the Speech and Hearing Sciences Department at the University of Washington as saying that, ".. a child's brain is most receptive to acquiring sounds during the child's first few months of life, and language in the first few years of life." Incidentally, she goes on to say that "Therefore, students may learn a second language more quickly if taught in the elementary grades instead of waiting until high school."
Infants are very good at remembering sight/sound relationships. From the CNN Interactive web site: "First, young test subjects watch a videotape of a woman who speaks the words. Then, the babies are taken to another room where a flashing light gets their attention, followed by an audiotape of the same woman saying the same words. The test subjects are still too young to know the meanings of the words, but the babies become so familiar with how the words sound they can pick them out, even when background voices are added, says Johns Hopkins Psychology Professor Peter Jusczyk." Professor Jusczyk's site
More of Professor Jusczyk's work is reported by Beth Azar with the American Psychological Association Monitor: ".. language learning is incremental, with the first step simply recognizing sound patterns." and "As evidence of how children learn language incrementally, researchers find that infants first learn to distinguish sound patterns of their native languages. This ability develops faster than any other aspect of language. It's not surprising that sound perception develops first and fastest, says psychologist Peter Jusczyk, PhD, of the State University of New York-Buffalo. When they aren't sleeping, infants spend most of their first year listening to speech sounds detached from meanings. Even when parents try to teach their children a particular word, more times than not, they imbed it in a sentence. 'Babies need to break that sentence down into sound patterns and pick out individual words,' explained Jusczyk. .. Once that happens, they can relate individual sound patterns to particular meanings. This idea of putting an unknown object to a known sound pattern is contrary to the traditional view that babies learn sound patterns, such as words, to name objects they're interested in. .. Jusczyk doesn't deny that object-naming occurs, but he contends that babies also store word patterns in memory and eventually attach them to objects in the environment."
The same researchers found that "The infants listened longer to their own names than to any other name, even the ones with similar sound patterns. 'This finding suggests that 4-and-a-half-month-olds have a rather detailed representation of the sound patterns of their names,' the researchers concluded."
Of course, Ms. Azar goes on to say, "This doesn't mean they understand what their names mean, but it's the first step, said Jusczyk. 'Infants as young as 4-and-a-half months of age are learning to recognize sound patterns that will have a special personal significance for them,' he concluded."
Graham Schafer and Kim Plunkett's work, outlined in Rapid Early Word Learning, demonstrates that 12 to 17 month old infants are able to match auditory with image stimulation. They " looked preferentially at images which matched the auditory stimulus." and "showed learning after twelve presentations of the new words." The researchers said, "The experiment provides support for previous demonstrations of rapid word learning by pre-vocabulary spurt children.." The vocabulary spurt, widely know by child development experts as a time when infants demonstrate a significant increase in spoken vocabulary, normally occurs at around 18 months. This research shows that babies younger than 18 months are able to learn auditory with visual relationships as well. The experiment also demonstrates, coincidentally, that repetition helps a baby learn.
Work in the same area by Amanda Woodward, Assistant Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago, is reported by Andrew Campbell in Baby Talk : "Say what you mean, we're told. It's challenge enough for adults, but imagine how babies fare, when the very idea of 'meaning' that words are symbols for objects or ideas in the world is a major discovery."
"When do infants make this connection? Earlier than most people think, says psychologist Amanda Woodward. She has shown that children comprehend words equally well at 13 months, an age when they use just five to ten words as at 18 months, when their vocabulary is about 100 words and the pace of word learning suddenly zooms upward."
"This change called the naming explosion or vocabulary spurt is a key stage in development. Woodward, who came to Chicago last fall as an associate professor, has recently broken with the phenomenon's traditional explanations, which propose various progressions in conceptual development to explain 18-month-olds' new understanding that words are symbols. Before then, the theory goes, a child laboriously learns words through association, almost as a dog might link the sound of a bell with food."
"Working from that theory, Woodward along with colleagues Colleen Fitzsimmons and Ellen Markman of Stanford University tried to measure how much better an older baby could learn new words, hoping to correlate that skill with other abilities. They exposed 13- and 18-month-old infants to unfamiliar objects like a big plastic paper clip and a plastic strainer, calling one of them by a made-up name, toma. After one person repeated the word nine times in different situations, another unaware which object was the toma tested the child's comprehension through a play activity, such as presenting two objects on a tray and asking the child to 'put the toma in the box.' They adjusted these verbal instructions so as not to unfairly confuse 13-month-olds."
"Surprisingly, the researchers found little difference in rates of word learning and retention between the two groups of infants. Babies at both ages even remembered the new word after a 24-hour delay."
Not only can babies learn words and relate them to visual stimulation, but they can also categorize them, as confirmed by the work of Marie Balaban, assistant professor of psychology at The Johns Hopkins University and Sandra Waxman at Northwestern University and reported by Emil Venere in Language Plays Key Role in Infant Learning : "New findings suggest that infants as young as nine months use words to begin shaping their view of the world, arranging objects into mental categories, in a process previously associated more with preschoolers than with mere babes."
About his research in the same area, Dr. Einar R. Siqueland of Brown university says in Infant Visual Information Processing that "Recent studies have shown that by 3-4 months of age infants increasingly rely on more general category information as memory demands on visual form recognition tasks are increased. Not only do young infants show that ability to categorize stimuli, but the basis for categorization of forms is the formation of a prototype. The ability to classify or categorize experiences is a basic form of cognition and intelligence that infants use to adapt to their physical and social environment. These studies show that the underlying perceptual processing skills that are necessary for categorization activities demonstrated by older children and adults have their roots in early infancy."
Research by Elissa Newport, Ph.D., of the University of Rochester was reported by Beth Azar with the American Psychological Association Monitor, where it was confirmed that young children are better at learning languages than adults or even teenagers, and that ".. the ability to learn language gradually declines as the brain matures. By late puberty, everyone learns at about the same rate." The concluding reason was that, "Research shows that children can only handle small bits of information at a time because they have a more limited perspective than adults. .. Children's limited perspective forces them to learn language in stages. They acquire a few pieces at a time and learn slowly how to put them together. This system works for learning language because language is composed of many little parts." There might be advantages to limited frames of reference. There might also be an advantage to presenting small, simple bits of material to an infant and repeating it.
And see the web site Psychologist Provides New View on Infant Intelligence , where research that was conducted by Amanda Woodward, Assistant Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago has shown that children begin to develop reasoning skills as young as 7 months of age. "'The findings support the conclusion that by seven months, infants differentiate between people and objects in their reasoning about simple causal sequences,' Woodward said, in a paper co-authored with Ann Phillips and Elizabeth Spelke."
One piece of research reported by Dr. Restak again demonstrates the ability of infants to relate visual with auditory stimulus: "These immature infants were tested for their ability to learn. Two stimuli (a flashing light and an emitted sound) were paired with each other and presented repeatedly to the subjects. Intermixed with these paired stimuli were test trials when only one, the first stimulus, was presented. In this technique (a classic association experiment) learning can be inferred when a subject displays some kind of 'surprise' response. The heart rate, for example, may accelerate when only one stimulus occurs instead of the expected pair of stimuli. The results of the experiment are almost too startling to believe: both infants demonstrated by their responses that they had learned that the stimuli usually occur in pairs. In the investigators' words, such a finding 'clearly documents the existence in the premature human infant of associative processes relatively independent of the cerebral hemispheres.' Their conclusions are even more provocative. 'Complex psychological processes such as learning do not appear to be exclusively within the domain of the cerebral hemispheres.' Thus, contemporary research on the infant brain is suggesting that our human capabilities are not 'locked into' the cerebral hemispheres like precious jewels within a safe at the Plaza Hotel but, rather, our behavioral repertoire is very much dependent upon the whole brain. Our subcortical centers (those we share with 'lower' animals) are capable of doing a lot more than we usually give them credit for." (THE INFANT MIND, 90)
There's more. The following is a long quote, but it's well worth reading. Dr. Restak first restates a puzzle suggested by John Locke: "Imagine a blind person to whom full vision is suddenly restored. Place a wooden cube and wooden sphere before him and ask, 'Point to the sphere.' Could he do it?" He also makes reference to Jean Piaget, who did a lot of the early work in child development research (although, despite the acknowledgment of his significant contributions, he has been shown to be incorrect in some conclusions) .
"An infant researcher tested the capacity of four-month-old babies to detect sight/sound correlations. The four month olds watched two films. In the first film a woman, similar to their mothers, looked out and played a game of peek-a-boo. The other film was a musical and depicted musical instruments with an emphasis on a percussion section. As both films were presented side by side in front of the infants, the sound tracks alternated from film to film. The result: the infants tended to watch the film appropriate to the sound track of the moment."
"Another experiment along the same lines: the infants were shown two films of toy animals being lifted and dropped on the ground at different intervals. As each animal hit the ground, a large percussion sound, a thump, or a gong, was produced. Since the animals were lifted and dropped at different rates, the accompanying sound track consisted of percussion sounds occurring in different rhythms. Could four-month-old infants turn their attention to the film and its corresponding sound track? Indeed, they could, and did with additional flourishes the experimenters hadn't anticipated. In general, the infants when presented with a sound track alone immediately honed in on the appropriate movie even when they had no previous exposure to either film. The infants, it seems, could recognize and remember a temporal pattern and subsequently match it to a particular film. With such an experiment, we're edging very closely, indeed, to the 'roundness' of the sphere."
"In similar experiments carried out by infant researchers worldwide, infants have turned out to be wiser than most of the investigators dared to suggest. 'Folklore' or 'old wives' tales' seem suddenly not so foolish, so unreliable. Infants can tell who speaks, can separate mothers from fathers, and not simply perceive a mother/father amalgam. This, too, has been proved. In the experiment the mother was slightly nervous and the father impatient because he was forced out of his office and into the company of 'baby doctors.' Both sat silently before their baby, neither speaking, on the orders of the researcher." (THE INFANT MIND, 194)
"Suddenly the room was filled with the recorded voice of only one of the parents, the mother, emanating from a source between and equidistant from the mother and father. Whom do you think baby of three and a half months looked toward? Suddenly the mother became less anxious, the father less impatient to be back at work. They smiled and congratulated each other on having the good judgment to have produced such a genius."
"In other experiments toys are placed in the hands of an eight month old with a screen in front of the baby so that what's felt can't be seen. The object is made to produce a captivating sound. Later the infant is shown two objects. It isn't allowed to touch them, only to see them, neither of which is visually familiar. Almost unfailingly the infant reaches for the toy that it had felt earlier, presumably wanting to hear that captivating sound again. John Locke should have tried such an experiment and could have actually, since nothing in the way of fancy equipment or rejected grant proposals precluded such an experiment. All that was necessary was to reassure a mother in eighteenth-century London that it was proper for a philosopher to maintain such an interest in babies. After all, what does a baby know?"
"And what can the children of the ignorant or the poor teach the Wise or the High and Mighty? But let me tell you of another experiment Locke would have found even more fascinating, which perhaps would have startled him and no doubt disturbed his sleep and his composure. Babies less than four weeks old are provided with a pacifier either round and smooth or stippled with tiny protuberances on it. After ninety seconds of sucking, the pacifier is taken away in the interest of the 'experiment.' Can the babies distinguish the smooth from the stippled pacifier from pictures alone? They can. What does it prove? That the neonate is a storer of information, can transform aspects of his world into representations, manipulate these representations, and infer that something felt in the mouth looks a certain way and no other. Piaget would also have trouble with this nipple experiment. The babies didn't perform their feat by perceptually associating the look and feel of the pacifier. It's hard to see something stuck in your mouth, and later nothing was in the mouth when the pictures were flashed on the screen. Whatever associations were formed took place within the baby brain."
"Feeling guides seeing, seeing guides reaching, hearing guides looking. The infant observes a toy, reaches for it, expects something to be at the ends of his fingers. The infant hears his mother's voice off to the side and turns expecting his mother and nobody else. All very neat and non-Piagetian except for one troublesome discovery that would have delighted the heart of Piaget because it partially vindicates him." (THE INFANT MIND, 195)
Note in the following the effects of a lack of more detailed frames of reference: "If the baby reaches for something that appears soft (a nipple) and finds instead that it is hard (a plastic imitation), he expresses no surprise. We reach for an apple on a friend's dining room table only to pick up a plastic imitation more perfect than any apple nature ever intended. Our face registers surprise, embarrassment that we could so easily be duped. Not the baby, however. There are no signs of distress or discomfiture. The baby feels what he feels and nothing else, eschews comparison between what is and what was expected to be. This is very close to Piaget's theory - the baby doesn't realize yet that the sight and feel of an object adhere to a common space and are, in fact, identical aspects of one thing. Our Swiss savant spent his life establishing that such correspondences are only gradually constructed. He missed out or glossed over two important tools the baby employs to establish these correspondences. The baby can guide perception in one sphere (sight, sound, touch) by any one of the others. Second, the infant can identify objects by sight that were once only felt, and vice versa."
"Which brings us around to John Locke's dilemma of the blind man forced to choose between the cube and the sphere. If Locke had only consulted the newborn, simply observed what the infant can accomplish between breast and nap, he would have found his answer. Infants can use information from one sense to guide another: sound guides looking and sight guides reaching. The infant may not be surprised at a mismatch (plastic apple) but still can use one receptor (sight) to guide another (reaching for the apple). What happens next differs from infant to adult: the adult is surprised by a mismatch while the baby isn't. That comes later. 'Most indubitably, the blind man would be able to distinguish between these objects,' the well-informed ghost of John Locke whispered in my ear but a moment ago." (THE INFANT MIND, 196)
Stacey Berstein's and Anne Hollister's article, "Memory," on page 49 of the July, 1993 issue of LIFE shows that babies can learn sequences of events with practice: "In his lab at the University of Denver, psychologist Marshall Haith has spent much of the past four years putting infants into large black boxes were they lie and look up at TV screens. The program they see is a Haith invention: a sequence of color objects appearing on different sides of the monitor. Using an infrared camera linked to a computer, Haith follows the babies' eye movements and has found that after only five tries the babies can anticipate where the next object will appear. With a little more practice, they can foresee a four-step sequence. And up to two weeks later, most can still predict it. Says Haith: 'The babies are not just looking. They're analyzing, creating little hypotheses.'"
"Similar findings by Carolyn Rovee-Collier, a psychologist at Rutgers University, suggest that infants can remember surprisingly intricate details. In a typical experiment, she places a baby in a crib beneath an elaborate mobile, ties one of the baby's ankles to it with a satin ribbon, then observes as the baby kicks and - often gleefully - makes it move. When, weeks later, the baby's feet are left untied and the mobile is returned to the crib, the baby will try to kick again, presumably recalling the balmy days of kicking the last time. But if the mobile's elements are changed even slightly, the baby will remain unmoved - and unmoving. 'When we change things,' explains Rovee-Collier, 'it wipes out the memory. But as soon as we bring back what had become familiar and expected, the memory comes right back. What we've learned from this is that even at two and a half months, an infant's memory is very developed, very specific and incredibly detailed.'" See the Shields and Rovee-Collier reference in the bibliography for more detail.
The LIFE article continues: "Rachel Clifton, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts, says that an infant's experience at six months can be remembered a full two years later. Clifton stumbled upon her findings while researching motor and hearing skills. Three years ago she placed 16 six-month-olds in a pitch-dark room with objects that made different sounds. Using infrared cameras like Haith's, she observed how and when the infants reached for the objects. Later, realizing she had created a unique situation that couldn't have been duplicated in real life, she wondered if the babies would remember their experience. Two years after the original experiment, collaborating with psychologist Nancy Myers, she brought the same 16 children back to the lab, along with a control group of 16 other two-and-a-half-year-olds. Amazingly, the experimental group showed the behavior they had at six months, reaching for objects and showing no fear. Fewer control-group toddlers reached for the objects, and many of them cried."
"Says Myers: 'For so long, we didn't think that infants could represent in their memories the events that were going on around them, but put them back in a similar situation, as we did, and you can make the memory accessible.'"
A baby, and all of us to some extent, use a method of learning that has to do with selection based on the frequency of stimulation: "Which connections endure depend upon how often they are utilized. This process is a familiar one in the brain: large numbers of cells are culled down to a smaller, more compact number by means of a 'Darwinian' selection; depending on the state of activity of the synapse, the neuron and its connections may stabilize or regress." (THE INFANT MIND, 69) This pruning process starts at about 10 years of age.
And from the Zanvyl Krieger Mind-Brain Institute Biennial Report from Johns Hopkins University we learn that "The brain of an infant is almost infinitely adaptable. During the first four or five years of life, nerve cells (neurons) of the brain are much like the child itself: they are exuberant. Their anatomy is very complex, with more interconnections with other neurons than they can maintain into adulthood. As a result, any disturbance in the brain itself, or in the sensory organs of the eye, ear, or skin, produces a marked response in the infant brain, with new connections formed between previously separate neurons."
Learning is in proportion to the amount and complexity of stimulation: "Underlying these changes in brain weight are equally dramatic alterations in the complexity of the branching of individual neurons. Long-lasting effects occur as a result of experience. The more complex the experience, 'the richer' the environment, the more complex the brain. Rats provided with playthings, mazes to run through, and just the right amount of stimulating companionship wind up as the proud owners of brains weighing more. Their cerebral cortex is thicker; there's an increased number of nerve cells. Whether or not any of these changes contribute to the happiness and well-being of a rat remains an impenetrable mystery. What isn't mysterious, however, are the claims that some neuroscientists have made about the effect of experience on brain growth: the greater the diversity and challenge of the environment, the greater the complexity of the brain, they tell us." (THE INFANT MIND, 91) And from an article about the work of William Greenough, Ph.D., "Not only do young rats reared in toy-strewn cages exhibit more complex behavior than rats confined to sterile, uninteresting boxes, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found, but the brains of these rats contain as many as 25% more synapses per neuron. Rich experiences, in other words, really do produce rich brains." Dr. Greenough was quoted saying, "'We found that the brains of rats placed in stimulating surroundings were more elaborate than those of rats placed in isolation. The animals in the first group had more brain-cell connections, and they solved problems (such as finding their way through a maze) more rapidly,' he explains. 'It was clear that a stimulating environment brought out the best in them.'" In fact, Professor Greenough's work, in which neuronal dendrites and synapses are shown to be increased by exposure of rats to enriched environments, has been performed both in young rats and in adult rats with essentially equivalent results. Likewise, his laboratory has reported a number of times that learning of mazes or motor skills in adult rats alters dendritic fields and increases synapse numbers in relevant brain areas. Work on humans by Huttenlocher similarly suggests a great deal of dynamic brain structural capacity in children well beyond infancy. The maliability of the human brain is not limited to very young children. More of Professor Greenough's work can be found at The William T. Greenough Laboratory site.
And Baby Brainpower by Gail Rosenblum, reports that, "Social scientists have long suspected that children's intelligence and well-being are affected by their environment--whether or not they are nourished adequately, challenged intellectually, and given enough affection. Now, modern brain-imaging techniques have confirmed this notion. 'We recognize that the actual physical wiring of the brain is susceptible to experience,' says William Greenough, Ph.D., professor of psychology and cell and structural biology at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."
Ms. Rosenblum also says that, "The same goes for babies. Specifically, a baby's environment during the first year of life appears to have an enormous impact on brain development. It is during the first few months that the brain's wiring is fine-tuned, and excess cells and synapses--typically those that have never been used--are eliminated, explains Kathryn Taaffe Young, Ph.D., a New York City-based developmental psychologist. Dr. Young is the principal author of Starting Points: Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children, a 1994 Carnegie Corporation study that underscored the importance of maximizing children's potential for learning before age three. 'The first year is critical for healthy brain development,' she emphasizes. 'If synapses aren't used, they die, and there's no chance to revive them.'"
So the opposite is also possible. From the another article: "Deprived of a stimulating environment, a child's brain suffers. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, for example, have found that children who don't play much or are rarely touched develop brains 20% to 30% smaller than normal for their age."
And Ms. Rosenblum reports that "What this means is that children reared in environments where stimulation is limited actually have fewer synapses than those raised in environments where they are regularly talked to, held, and visually stimulated, according to Dr. Young. You may not have realized it, but all of the things that you do with your baby regularly add up: When you sing to an infant, talk to her, hold her, play with her, and give her appropriate toys and objects to explore, you are creating an environment that enables her brain to develop to its maximum potential."
Dr. Melanie J. Spence's Infant Learning Project at the University of Texas at Dallas School of Human Development, outlines abilities with age:
"Babies learn rapidly about the sights and sounds of their environment, and how to affect the people and objects that make up their worlds. Consider the following accomplishments in the infant's life:
The Houston Cronicle's report on the program of Craig T. Ramey with the University of Alabama shows that "Intense stimulation of infants and young children, through vision, touch and speech can significantly improve their intelligence and ability to learn .. He said infants are exposed to a variety of visual and audible stimulants, especially language, and a lot of holding, touching and stroking. .. The earlier a child begins such a program, the better, Ramey said. Studies show that infants benefit more than children who begin at age 2, and 2-year-olds benefit more than 4-year-olds. .. 'The longer a child is in an unstimulating environment, the less recovery,' Ramey said." They are working with babies as young as 6 weeks old. Note however, that it is the very close attention of human beings that is providing the stimulation, not a computer. Computers can't possibly do for babies what caring people can do, but at least they can help with the boring, repetitive, rote-memory material.
Try your own experiment with a baby who is at least 3 months old: Watch a baby being wheeled around in a basket at a supermarket. Find one who is not fussing or playing with the person pushing the basket, and don't let the baby see you. You will probably see a very serious look on a very tiny face. Note the level of concentration. If toes are the subject, then toes and only toes are the world for that moment. Babies might have a short attention span in terms of time, but it's more than made up for in intensity. If we had an attention product consisting of a level of intensity times units of time, babies would beat adults every time. That look is not gas. It is the look of one who is absorbing every nuance of the surrounding world. It's a pretty good bet that babies are actively, purposefully (to mean with innate purpose but not to imply analytical thought) collecting all of the information they can absorb about this new and curious world they find themselves in, do so at a very early age, and remember what they have learned. There exists the incredible opportunity to take advantage of that quest and give babies enormous amounts of knowledge. It probably won't be knowledge they will be able to relate back to at a later age in terms of when and where they learned it, but the information gets in there between their ears in some form or another, and it seems a good guess that they'll be able to tell us about it when they are old enough to talk!
And here's another one to think about. Do you know "Mary Had a
Little Lamb"? When did you learn it? People know lots of things that
they don't remember being taught. I know the Apostle's Creed
because I grew up with it. You probably know something like it
from your religion or from day care or from home. It's just there.
How early can we get such knowledge? Maybe earlier than we think.
THE INFANT MIND, Dr. Richard M. Restak, M.D., Doubleday, 1986
THE BRAIN, Dr. Richard M. Restak, M.D., Bantom Books, 1984
THE BRAIN HAS A MIND OF ITS OWN, Dr. Richard M. Restak, M.D., Harmony Books, 1991
BRAINSCAPES, Dr. Richard M. Restak, M.D., Hyperion, 1995
THE MIND, (Also a series on PBS -- look for tapes in your library) Dr. Richard M. Restak, M.D., Bantom Books, 1988
RECEPTORS, Dr. Richard M. Restak, M.D., Bantom Books, 1994
YOUR CHILD'S GROWING MIND, Dr. Jane M. Healy, Ph.D., Doubleday, 1987
HOW CHILDREN FAIL, John Holt, Pitman, 1964
HOW CHILDREN LEARN, John Holt, Pitman, 1967
DUMBING DOWN OUR KIDS: Why America's Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read Write Or Add, Charles J. Sykes, St. Martin's Press, 1995
PROFESSOR PHONICS GIVES SOUND ADVICE, Monica Foltzer, M. Ed., St. Ussula Academy, 1339 E. McMillan Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45206 (see your library)
THE WORLD OF THE NEWBORN, Daphine Maurer and Charles Maurer, Basic
Books, Inc., New York
"From Birth To Three", Spring/Summer 1997 issue of Newsweek -- this article is packed with information and resource information
"Special Report -- How A Child's Brain Develops", February 3,1997 issue of TIME -- good diagrams of the brain's function -- also good information on windows of learning
"You Can Raise Your Child's I.Q.", Edwin Kiester, Jr. and Sally Valente Kiester October, 1996 issue of Reader's Digest -- good information on recent research
Look up the Scientific American special issue of September, 1992. Lots of good stuff there.
If language is your thing, there's a very good article in the June, 1996 issue of Discover.
Just read the cover of the July, 1993 issue of LIFE, and you will feel compelled to read inside. Besides, there's some great pictures of some cute little folks! You need only read page 49 to KNOW this can work! Be sure you read the last page, too, though, where it talks about getting carried away to the point of stupidity.
Another very good article is in the May-June, 1990 issue of American Scientist on page 236 by Jean M. Mandler entitled "A New Perspective on Cognitive Development in Infancy." It shows how some of the testing is done and outlines some of the research.
How are the schools doing these days? Here is the opinion of one
magazine: "America's Schools: Still Failing After All These Years."
National Review, September 18, 1997
Journals such as CHILD DEVELOPMENT, COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT, INFANT BEHAVIOR AND DEVELOPMENT, JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY, COGNITION and many others contain a wealth of information about babies and how they see their world. Some sample papers from a couple of volumes of CHILD DEVELOPMENT are listed below. If you want to get into serious study, read the journals. That's where you will find the original research.
Shields, Pamela J. and Rovee-Collier, Carolyn, "Long-Term Memory for Context-Specific Category Information at Six Months", Child Development, 1992, 63, 245-259
Werner, Lynne A.; Marean, G. Cameron; Halpin, Christopher F.; Spetner, Nancy Benson; and Gillenwater, Jay M. "Infant Auditory Temporal Acuity: Gap Detection", Child Development, 1992, 63, 260-272
Jacobson, Sandra S.; Jacobson, Joseph L.; O'Neill, James M.; Padgett, Robert J.; Frankowski, James J.; and Bihun, Joan T. "Visual Expectation and Dimensions of Infant Information Processing", Child Development, 1992, 63, 711-724
Fose, Susan A.; Fieldman, Judith F.; and Wallace, Ina F. "Infant Information Processing in Relation to Six-Year Cognitive Outcomes", Child Development, 1992, 63, 1126-1141
Skouteris, H.; McKenzie, B. E.; and Day, R. H. "Integration of Sequential Information for Shape Perception by Infants: A Developmental Study", Child Development, 1992, 63, 1164-1176
Bronson, Gordon W. "Infant Differences in Rate of Visual Encoding" Child Development, 1991, 62, 44-54
Thompson, Lee A.; Fagan, Joseph F.; and Fulker, David W.
"Longitudinal Prediction of Specific Cognitive Abilities from
Infant Novelty Preference" Child Development, 1991, 62, 530-538
For a text-book look at child development, see the following:
HANDBOOK OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY, Paul H. Mussen, Editor, Fourth Edition Volume III, COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT, John H. Flavell and Ellen M. Markman, Volume Editors
CHILD DEVELOPMENT & PERSONALITY, Seventh Edition Paul Henry Mussen, John Janeway Conger, Jerome Kagan, Aletha Carol Huston See chapter three, Perceptual and Cognitive Development in Infancy
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