| For many decades child development experts have | | | | that sequence works, but somehow their brains |
| held the belief that children are far less intelligent than | | | | compute it subconsciously. |
| adults; that they don't understand many facets of life | | | | Now you're probably thinking 'why?' From the outset |
| and are largely unaware of them too. Professor of | | | | it's not clear why babies need this heightened |
| Psychology at the University of California, Alison | | | | intelligence whilst everything is being done for them, but |
| Gopnik, has set out to change that dated view of | | | | most people can relate quite closely to it. Have you |
| childhood cognition in her books 'How Babies Think' and | | | | ever thought, or said out loud to friends "wouldn't it be |
| 'The Philosophical Baby' amongst others, and it's all to | | | | lovely to be a child again? With no cares in the world?". |
| do with imagination. | | | | Certainly most of us have. The 'useless' child isn't |
| Alison maintains the view that babies are 'useless'. | | | | useless just for fun; children are actually learning very |
| There's no doubting that the human race has the | | | | important things about the world while their parents |
| longest time from conception to a child being able to | | | | take care of sustaining their survival, finding food, |
| look after themselves and in an evolutionary sense | | | | keeping them clean, etc. |
| that doesn't make much sense. To be able to survive | | | | Toddlers of as young as 18 months are already |
| better we should become independent as soon as | | | | starting to learn the difference between morality driven |
| possible, perhaps once we're weaned from our | | | | by empathy and morality driven by rules, and this |
| mother's milk, yet it's only 17 years later that we're | | | | learning can be clearly seen at a number of stages. |
| considered to be capable. Alison wanted to look closer | | | | Take a child at the 'terrible twos' stage for example. |
| at the reasons for this and carried out experiments of | | | | They're terrible because they do 'bad' things despite |
| infants of various ages, that went deeper into their | | | | knowing their parents won't like it. To adults it seems |
| cognition than experts had ever been before. | | | | calculated and mischievous, but the two year old has |
| What Alison and various other child psychologists and | | | | only just learned that other people are capable of |
| researchers found was that children do think and | | | | different values and desires. They're testing this |
| understand complex thoughts, but they do it in a very | | | | absurdity to try and understand it. |
| different way to adults. Incredibly, babies have a better | | | | From studying child cognition much more closely than |
| understanding and memory of very complex | | | | ever before and looking at children from a very |
| sequences of events. One experiment involved a | | | | different angle, Alison Gopnik and her team of |
| researcher showing children a complex set of events | | | | researchers have discovered something incredible |
| that would turn a machine on or off. The children | | | | about the way that their minds work. Quite how this |
| repeatedly followed the sequence correctly, having | | | | will affect the way that parenting and childcare |
| only been shown once and it was concluded that they | | | | evolves remains unclear, but it certainly gives us pause |
| don't have a full and rounded understanding of how | | | | for thought when playing with our own children. |