Babies Know More Than You Think

At first glance, it may seem that newborn babies are entirely reliant on their adult caretakers.  After all, they cannot walk, feed themselves, or speak.  So it is easy to assume that they are blank slates when they are born and everything is taught or specially shown to them.  However, there is evidence to the contrary.  In fact, babies know a lot about humans and behavior before they are taught.

The basis behind various tests is a behavior called habituation, which is basically a scientific term for boredom.  When babies are shown something over and over again, soon they stop looking and listening (not unlike adults).  Using this behavior, it can be seen that babies actually know a lot about people. 

If babies are shown pictures of happy people, eventually, they will habituate and no longer pay attention.  However, when a picture of a sad person is shown to them, they take notice again.  In this way, it can be seen that babies can tell there is a difference between facial expressions of sadness and happiness.

In another experiment, a picture of a moving person is reduced to a series of lights that correspond to the movement of the joints.  Babies will pay more attention to the series of lights that are from actual human movement than a series of random moving lights.  It appears as if babies know that it is to be a person, and how a person is able to behave.