Babies Brains

A fascinating documentary study on babies from birth to two years old.

• Babies are born with 50 trillion nerve connections in their brains. Over time, some little used connections will be pruned and extra connections made through activity.
• At 1 week old, babies respond to faces much more than objects. Activity is found in part of our 'social brain'.
• From 4 months to 1 year, babies love and need one-to-one attention. Long-term social deprivation is harmful.
• At 12 months or even at 7 months, babies will choose the good 'helpful' puppet.

• Parents respond quickly to babies' cries. The sound pattern arouses the parent's amygdala.
• Bonding through laughter decreases stress and boosts immune system. Peekaboo was more likely to cause laughter, followed by stuffing mouth with flannel, ripping up paper, cup on head and last, animals making strange noises. Laughing helps social connection. Babies laugh more with older siblings and find dogs twice as funny as cats.

• Babies temperament shows early - whether they are excitable, calm, cautious.
• Personal preferences about people. Race is easy for babies to distinguish, and who they see around them gives familiarity. They recognise and look for fairness in a person's behaviour, but will prefer to play with someone of the same race. Good therefore to expose them to wide range of people and environments.
• In the 1990s, young children chose gender specific roles (male and female dolls and a range of activities, e.g., washing, housework, rocking the baby, washing the car). In contrast in 2018, toddlers around 2 yrs old chose both genders for all activities apart from washing the car.
• Once babies are walking and more stable physically (around 19 months), they display preferences for specific activities - dancing, lego and building, football, drawing, phones.
• Around 75% of babies use mobile phones daily. Studies show a possible negative impact on sleep and attention, but a positive impact on fine motor control (phone users are better at building a tower from blocks).

• Talking - when do babies learn rules of conversation? Five babies 12 to 14 months watched robot/person demonstration of alternate babbling. Babies then copied 'answering' when the robot 'talked' to them.
• Using 'parentese' helps babies learn speech, as it heightens pitch, lengthens words and stresses rhythm. Babies brains synchronise with the rhythm of speech.
• Where there are multiple languages spoken at home, babies easily learn all they hear. They can detect all possible phonemes (individual sounds that make up words) even when these are very close in sound, where adults cannot, unless they know the sounds in the language(s) they use. However this ability only lasts a short while (between 6 and 8 months) and is gone by the age of twelve months, as brain connections are reinforced or deactivated.
• At 18 months they are communicating verbally with carers as they are more important. At this stage also there is an explosion of words, which speeds up between 18 and 24 months.
• They start to use social words (hiya, thank you). Regional differences in frequency of words in use (thank you, sorry).
• Hearing lots of words means better language ability later and bigger vocabulary later, and so do better at school.

• Babies gain a sense of self at around 21 months when they recognise themselves in a mirror.
• Understanding that other people can feel differently from oneself. Presented with broccoli and crisps, babies typically chose crisps. Shown an adult obviously preferring the broccoli, from about 18 months will give the adults preference to the adult.
• Empathy is thought to develop in stages. First awareness of distress, later wanting to help. Thought this did not occur until 2 years. A 17 month old instant awareness of distress but doesn't know what to do. At 18 months goes to mum 'asking for help'. At 2 years tries to comfort crying baby doll with bottle.
• Self control skills predict better concentration at school, and better at exams.

• Crawling is a baby's first taste of independence. However they have no depth perception and new crawlers will go straight across a clear plastic bridge over a sheer drop. But within a few weeks they have learnt about the risk and will not cross even to reach mother.
• When infants begin to walk their perception of the world changes from the restricted vision of the floor to seeing much more around them, especially people. They also start to carry things and become more independent.
• By age 2 they are wanting to do things themselves and often start nursery at this age. Since parents are not there to help, they must learn to play and co-operate with others. In an experiment where 2 children must each pull a lever at the same time to release a toy after a single demonstration by an adult, they can do this at 2 years. 

• Memory. Shown an interesting toy, and then cover it. Young babies lose interest, but by 10 months will pull off the cloth to find the toy. This follows the 8th month growth spurt in the frontal lobes. This ability is also the cause of separation anxiety.
• At 2 years start to keep memory of what is seen and adding information given by adult. Shown a furry rabbit toy named Lucy, then taken to another activity. The adult then tells them the rabbit has got wet and shows them a dry rabbit and a wet one, otherwise identical. Asked to say which is Lucy, one child selected the wet rabbit at 19 months, and 3 out of 5 did so at age 2.
• Tantrums are caused by frustration and best ended by distraction. Babies eventually learn to distract themselves.

Source: Babies Brains 3-part documentary on BBC2, 2018