What can babies do better than adults?
It is tempting to think of babies as miniature adults in the making, but babies have several skills that we as adults have lost over the course of development. One striking example is that babies have broader perceptual abilities. This means that they are equipped to distinguish subtle differences that adults cannot perceive, such as in languages and faces.
Imagine that you visit the zoo with a 6-month-old baby. If right after visiting the monkey exhibit, you test the baby by showing her two monkey pictures side-by-side, one who was in the exhibit and the other who was not, she will tend to look more at the new monkey (indicating that she could tell them apart). But if you as an adult were given the same test, the two monkeys would look indistinguishable. What is really fascinating is that if you return to the zoo when this baby is one year old, she will now be just as bad at the monkey test as you are. She has not lost all face perception abilities, as she would still be able to tell two human zoo keepers apart. This phenomenon is known as “perceptual narrowing” because over development we become more specialized for things that we see more often in our environment (humans more than monkeys).
As another example of perceptual narrowing, at birth babies are able to learn any language on earth, such as Japanese, French, or both, depending on the speakers around them. However, as any adult knows, learning a new language later in life is extremely difficult. There are several potential reasons for this, but one is that you are no longer able to hear sounds in the new language that do not exist in your native language.
Perceptual narrowing shows us that early experiences play a critical role in building the mind. Our lab uses brain imaging to better understand this infant superpower.
– Tristan Yates