Active Not Passive Learners
Research shows that all the looking and listening that babies do is organized mentally into certain types of knowledge from early in life.
Listening to and looking at people teaches babies about how people behave (‘naive psychology’).
Listening to and looking at objects and events teaches babies about how the external physical world operates.
Babies learn what objects are like (e.g., rigid or flexible), and how objects move, and they learn the distinction between ‘natural kinds’ (animals and plants) and ‘artefacts’ (things made by man).
Learning about objects is ‘naive physics’, while learning about the natural world is ‘naive biology’.
Young babies are already developing at least three types of knowledge that map onto distinctions that are still made at university level—psychology, physics, and biology.
Indeed, one popular theoretical approach in child psychology is to draw an analogy between infants and scientists.
The premise is that babies and scientists have a similar approach to learning. Both babies and scientists make observations, carry out experiments, and draw conclusions.
A baby who keeps dropping the same toy for her mother to retrieve is learning the relationship between cause and effect (‘I drop, you fetch’). She is also learning about the different trajectories that the toy can fall along, and indirectly, she is learning about gravity (‘objects always fall if they are released, and they fall straight down’).
The ‘baby as scientist’ approach argues that infants have naive theories about how the world works. These theories are claimed to be based on innate expectations.
The kind of innate expectations (or ‘principles’ or ‘constraints’ guiding learning) are expectations like ‘one thing cannot be in two places at the same time’.
These innate expectations are then elaborated via learning—looking, listening, smelling, feeling, and tasting. For example, while one thing can never be in two places at once, two things can be in one place at once. This is possible if one object is inside another (the physical concept of containment).
An important milestone in learning about objects comes when babies are able to grasp efficiently. Once babies can manipulate things by themselves, learning really takes off.
Another important milestone is being able to sit up unsupported. This usually occurs between 4 and 6 months of age. Being able to sit upright enables babies to expand their range of actions on the world.
For example, babies can now turn objects around and turn them upside down. They can feel textures, see the objects from different angles, and pass them from hand to hand (note that ‘baby gym’ toys offer prone babies similar learning opportunities).
Becoming a ‘self-sitter’ has been shown to be related to babies’ understanding of objects as being three dimensional.
Perhaps an even more important developmental milestone is being able to move by yourself. Crawling and then walking enables the baby to get to the places she wants to go. While crawling makes it difficult to carry objects with you on your travels, learning to walk enables babies to carry things.
Indeed, walking babies spend most of their time selecting objects and taking them to show their carer, spending on average 30–40 minutes per waking hour interacting with objects. Even though an expert crawler can move more quickly and efficiently than a novice walker, babies persevere in learning to walk.
Walking usually develops between 11 and 12 months in Western cultures, and babies practise hard.
One study showed that newly walking infants take over 2,000 steps per hour, covering the length of approximately seven football pitches. The average distance travelled of 700 metres each hour means that during an average waking day, and allowing for meals, bath time, etc., most infants are travelling over 5 kilometres!
Self-generated movement is seen as critical for child development. Being able to crawl and then to walk enables babies to go to the places that they choose. The babies can then initiate object-focused social interactions.
As we all know, the places that babies choose include a number of places that adults do not want them to visit, like stairs, fireplaces, and plug sockets.
Indeed, research shows that novice walkers can have very bad judgement even with respect to choosing which path to follow.
For example, babies will hesitate at the top of a steep slope for ages, but then plunge down headfirst nonetheless. Or babies will dangle their foot into a gap that they cannot cross, then try anyway, and fall.
Nevertheless, most falling is adaptive, as it helps infants to gain expertise. Indeed, studies show that newly walking infants fall on average 17 times per hour.
From the perspective of child psychology, the importance of ‘mo
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