Parents often believe their babies to be smart beyond their years, yet studies reveal we may not give these little ones due credit: studies show babies as young as 45 hours can understand numbers and associate small ones with left hands while larger numbers with right ones naturally – even before learning language!
Scientists need a way to measure this number accurately – after all, an infant who’s only been alive a couple days isn’t exactly counting their fingers – which is why researchers from Paris Descartes University conducted several tests using audio clips of repeating sounds like ba or ta. Some infants heard six repeating sounds (representing “few”) while other heard 18 repeating tones (representing “many”).
After listening to six repetitions of 18 syllables, babies were shown geometric shapes: those hearing six repetitions saw a short rectangle while those hearing 18 repetitions saw larger ones. Subsequently they were presented with any repetition they hadn’t already been exposed to and shown images of two shapes side-by-side.
What Do Babies Know about Numbers? Researchers found that babies hearing six syllables followed by 18 syllables looked at a rectangle twice as long as that on the left; conversely for those hearing 18 first.
Complex? No doubt; yet researchers saw clearly what their experiment demonstrated: newborns have an inherent capacity for number association.
Psycholgist Maria Dolores de Hevia recently told Science that parents she recruited were frequently surprised. According to de Hevia, it’s “an amazing feeling when parents realize just how responsive and attentive their newborn can be for the very first time.”
Further investigation is warranted to ascertain if these findings hold in cultures which favor reading from right to left.
Either way, this study proves that babies are far smarter and much earlier than society gives them credit for. So parents aren’t totally crazy when they say their hours-old infant seems intelligent even if it may seem so to them!
This piece was initially published on December 15, 2017. Since that date, updates have been implemented.