{"id":17873,"date":"2015-05-26T10:17:26","date_gmt":"2015-05-26T14:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/?p=17873"},"modified":"2015-05-26T17:12:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-26T21:12:00","slug":"babies-can-think-before-they-can-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2015\/05\/babies-can-think-before-they-can-speak\/","title":{"rendered":"Babies can think before they can speak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY media release:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Infants are capable of understanding relations like &#8220;same&#8221; and &#8220;different&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Analogical learning processes are present in prelinguistic human infants<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/babies_crying.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-14664\" src=\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/babies_crying.jpg\" alt=\"babies_crying\" width=\"260\" height=\"273\" \/><\/a>Two pennies can be considered the same &#8212; both are pennies, just as two elephants can be considered the same, as both are elephants. <strong>Despite the vast difference between pennies and elephants, we easily notice the common relation of sameness that holds for both pairs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Analogical ability &#8212; the ability to see common relations between objects, events or ideas &#8212; is a key skill that underlies human intelligence and differentiates humans from other apes.<\/p>\n<p>While there is considerable evidence that preschoolers can learn abstract relations, it remains an open question whether infants can as well. In a new Northwestern University study, researchers found that <strong>infants are capable of learning the abstract relations of same and different after only a few examples<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This suggests that a skill key to human intelligence is present very early in human development, and that <strong>language skills are not necessary for learning abstract relations<\/strong>,&#8221; said lead author Alissa Ferry, who conducted the research at Northwestern.<\/p>\n<p>To trace the origins of relational thinking in infants, the researchers <strong>tested whether 7-month-old infants could understand the simplest and most basic abstract relation &#8212; that of sameness and difference between two things<\/strong>. Infants were shown pairs of items that were either the same &#8212; two Elmo dolls &#8212; or different &#8212; an Elmo doll and a toy camel &#8212; until their looking time declined.<\/p>\n<p>In the test phase, the infants looked longer at pairs showing the novel relation, even when the test pairs were composed of new objects. That is, <strong>infants who had learned the same relation looked longer at test pairs showing the different relation during test, and vice versa<\/strong>. This suggests that the infants had encoded the abstract relation and detected when the relation changed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We found that infants are capable of learning these relations,&#8221; said Ferry, now doing post-doctoral research at the International School for Advanced Studies in Italy. &#8220;Additionally, infants exhibit the same patterns of learning as older children and adults &#8212; relational learning benefits from seeing multiple examples of the relation and is impeded when attention is drawn to the individual objects composing the relation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Susan Hespos, a co-author of the study, and associate professor of psychology at Northwestern&#8217;s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences said, &#8220;<strong>We show that infants can form abstract relations before they learn the words that describe relations, meaning that relational learning in humans does not require language and is a fundamental human skill of its own<\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Dedre Gentner, a co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Weinberg, said, &#8220;<strong>The infants in our study were able to form an abstract same or different relation after seeing only 6-9 examples<\/strong>. It appears that relational learning is something that humans, even very young humans, are much better at than other primates.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For example, she noted that in a recent study using baboons,<strong> those animals that succeeded in matching same and different relations required over 15,000 trials<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;Prelinguistic Relational Concepts: Investigating Analogical Processing in Infants&#8221; published online in the journal <i>Child Development<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>NORTHWESTERN NEWS: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northwestern.edu\/newscenter\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.<wbr \/>northwestern.<wbr \/>edu\/<wbr \/>newscenter\/<\/a><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY media release: Infants are capable of understanding relations like &#8220;same&#8221; and &#8220;different&#8221; Analogical learning processes are present in prelinguistic human infants Two pennies can be considered&#8230; <a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2015\/05\/babies-can-think-before-they-can-speak\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[319,6,60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17873"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17879,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17873\/revisions\/17879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}