2023-07-04 18:00:00
“Toddlers seem to face a daunting challenge when it comes to choosing what to pay attention to. A new theory suggests that infant cognition exhibits an altercentric bias whereby, early in life, they prioritize the encoding of events that are the targets of others’ attention”, indicated researchers from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). To verify this hypothesis, they conducted a study with children aged 8 and 12 months.
8-month-old babies expected the object to be where the character saw it
To find out if 8-month-old infants might remember the location of an object when it was moved from one place to another, scientists used an animation showing a treadmill or a hand moving a ball behind a screen, then behind another screen. “When we reveal that one of the two slots is empty, the children look longer at where the ball should be. This shows us that the children remember where the object has moved” , explained Velisar Manea, lead author of the work, in a statement.
To analyze how other people’s observations affect babies’ memories, the team then conducted an experiment in which a cartoon character also tracked the movement of the ball. “While the ball is being transported to its first location, the figure looks at the ball. Then we remove the figure and the babies have to watch the ball move to the second location on their own. As expected, the infants expected to see the ball in the first spot, even though they saw it being moved to the second spot. Clearly, they trusted the character’s observations more.” said Velisar Manea.
At 12 months, self-confidence develops
According to the results, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, children become more confident at 12 months of age. To reach this conclusion, the researchers have similar experiences with older infants. “Unlike 8-month-old infants, 12-month-old babies were able to remember the last position of the ball. (…) After the first year of life, children are in a transition phase, where some are less affected by the observations of others, while others are still strongly influenced”, specified the author of the research.
According to the team, memory is built in such a way that it first relies on the observations of those around it, then becomes more independent, to facilitate the child’s learning. “at a unique moment in his life when motor immaturity limits his interaction with the environment”.
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