Getting Inside the Complex Mind of a Baby, Part 1

VOICE ONE: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Fritzi Bodenheimer. VOICE TWO: And I'm Bob Doughty. On our program this week, we discuss scientific findings about how intelligence develops in babies. VOICE ONE: Not long ago, many people believed that babies only wanted food and to be kept warm and dry. Some people thought babies were not able to learn things until they were five or six months old. Yet doctors in the United States say babies begin learning on their first day of life. The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is a federal government agency. Its goal is to identify which experiences can influence healthy development in people. Research scientists at the Institute note that babies are strongly influenced by their environment. They say a baby will smile if her mother does something the baby likes. A baby learns to get the best care possible by smiling to please her mother or other caregiver. This is how babies learn to connect and communicate with other people. The American researchers say this ability to learn exists in a baby even before birth. They say newborn babies can recognize and understand sounds they heard while they were still developing inside their mothers. A study last month from the Netherlands found evidence that unborn babies can remember sounds. Dutch researchers studied almost one hundred pregnant women. They played sounds to the growing fetus and watched its movements with ultrasound devices. They found that by thirty weeks of development the fetus could remember a sound for ten minutes. By the thirty-fourth week, the fetus could remember the sound for four weeks. VOICE TWO: Many experts say the first years of a child's life are important for all later development. An American study shows how mothers can strongly influence social development and language skills in their children. The study involved more than one thousand two hundred mothers and children. Researchers studied the children from the age of one month to three years. They observed the mothers playing with their children four times during this period. VOICE ONE: The researchers attempted to measure the sensitivity of the mothers. The women were considered sensitive if they supported their children's activities and did not interfere unnecessarily. They tested the children for thinking and language development when they were three years old. Also, the researchers observed the women for signs of depression. The children of depressed women did not do as well on tests as the children of women who did not suffer from depression. The children of depressed women did poorly on tests of language skills and understanding what they heard. These children also were less cooperative and had more problems dealing with other people. The researchers noted that the sensitivity of the mothers was important to the general health of their children. Children did better when their mothers were caring, even when the women suffered from depression. Source: Voice of America