Tag Archives: infants

Social cognition in the first year

Posted on February 6, 2020 by

Although the study of infancy has answered many important questions about the human capacity for social cognition, the relatively young field of developmental social cognition is far from reaching its adulthood. With the merging of developmental, behavioral and neurocognitive sciences, … Continue reading →

Posted in Infants, Social cognition, Toddler | Tagged , ,

Infants’ Instincts to Help, Share, and Comfort

Posted on November 2, 2018 by

Moral growth is promoted when we allow little ones to act on their instincts. An all-too-common belief in our culture —often held implicitly rather than explicitly — is that babies come into the world as either asocial (the “blank slate” … Continue reading →

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Infants ask for help when they know they don’t know

Posted on April 26, 2018 by

Although many animals have been shown to monitor their own uncertainty, only humans seem to have the ability to explicitly communicate their uncertainty to others. It remains unknown whether this ability is present early in development, or whether it only … Continue reading →

Posted in Infants, Knowing, Knowledge | Tagged , ,

Costly rejection of Wrongdoers by Infants and Children

Posted on April 8, 2016 by

How unappealing are individuals who behave badly towards others? We show here that children and even infants, although motivated by material rewards, are nonetheless willing to incur costs to avoid “doing business” with a wrongdoer. When given the choice to … Continue reading →

Posted in Children, Cognitive development, Cooperation, Infants, Social cognition | Tagged , , , ,

Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Infants

Posted on November 5, 2015 by

Human cooperation is a key driving force behind the evolutionary success of our hominin lineage. At the proximate level, biologists and social scientists have identified other-regarding preferences – such as fairness based on egalitarian motives, and altruism – as likely … Continue reading →

Posted in Altruism, Children, Cooperation, Fairness, Infants | Tagged , , , ,

Two-year-old Children differentiate Test Questions from Genuine Questions

Posted on November 5, 2015 by

Children are frequently confronted with so-called ‘ test questions’. While genuine questions are requests for missing information, test questions ask for information obviously already known to the questioner. In this study we explored whether two-year-old children respond differentially to one … Continue reading →

Posted in Children, Infants, Questions, Relational | Tagged , , ,

21-Month-Olds Understand the Cooperative Logic of Requests

Posted on November 5, 2015 by

Human communication rests on a basic assumption of partner cooperativeness, including even requesting. In the current study, an adult made an ambiguous request for an object to 21-month-old infants, with one potential referent being right in front of her and … Continue reading →

Posted in Children, Cooperation, Infants, Logic, Thinking | Tagged , , , ,

The Surprisingly Logical Minds of Babies

Posted on November 5, 2015 by

In particular, in my lab in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, I have spent the past decade trying to understand the mystery of how children learn so much from so little so quickly. Because, it turns … Continue reading →

Posted in Babies, Children, Cognition, Cognitive neuroscience, Infants, Minds | Tagged , , , , ,

Noam Chomsky on how Kids Acquire Language & Ideas

Posted on March 11, 2015 by

Noam Chomsky became internationally famous for proposing a novel solution to an age-old question: what does a baby know? After years of research, Chomsky proposed that newborns have a hard-wired ability to understand grammar. Language acquisition is as elemental to … Continue reading →

Posted in Infants, Language, Learning, Linguistic, Mind | Tagged , , , ,

Infants Learning Words from Pictures

Posted on November 18, 2014 by

This experiment was designed to clarify the referential status of infants’ newly learned words. We introduced 15- and 17-month-olds to a novel noun, presented in conjunction with pictures of two whisks that differed in color. We asked whether infants would … Continue reading →

Posted in Infants, Learning | Tagged ,