Babies can reason logically before they learn to speak – research
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Natural logical thinking is manifested from an early age and does not depend on knowledge of the language. This is evidenced by the data of a study by scientists from Spain from the UPF Brain and Cognition Center, the results of which were published in the journal Current Biology, writes Medicalxprees. Scientists have managed to establish that natural logical thinking exists at least from the age of 19 months. It develops due to the fact that the child learns to draw conclusions by exclusion. The study analyzed the importance for infants of two strategies for dealing with uncertainty: association and exclusion (or elimination of disjunction). Photo: joaquincorbalan/Depositphotos The first strategy would mean that when babies hear a new word that can refer to two unfamiliar objects they see, they mentally associate the word with each of them. They then associate the term with an object to which the name is more appropriate. The second elimination strategy explains how children can learn a new word by using logical reasoning to rule out alternatives. For example, if they see two objects (A and B) and hear an unknown term that they know is not A (because they know the name A), toddlers will determine that it is the name B. Scientists conducted two different experiments: with monolingual and bilingual 19-month-old babies. There were 61 of them in the first, and 33 babies took part in the second. In the first experiment, 61 participants were shown two objects that they had to associate with one of the words they heard using different tests. They knew one word (for example, spoon and cookie), and when they heard the term, they associated it with one of the two objects. In the second part of the experiment, they were first shown a known object (for example, an apple) and an unknown object (for example, a carburetor), and then they spoke a word that the children knew. The third test was the same as the second test, except that the heard word corresponded to an unknown word (eg, carburetor). In a second study involving 33 infants, two objects (such as an umbrella and a boy figure) and a sound associated with them were used. Then these objects were covered so that the child could not see them, and later one of them was shown. Malya could hardly have guessed what was in front of him by exclusion. Then the task was made more difficult: the child had to react to the sound coming from the covered objects. Next, the scientists observed whether the child correctly looked at the object to which the sound belongs. All these tests assessed eye movement patterns. For example, when a child reasons through the strategy of exclusion, he looks at object A, and if he excludes that this term refers to him, he turns his gaze to B. It is interesting that there are no significant differences in the logic of monolingual and bilingual children. Therefore, scientists believe that it does not depend on knowledge of the language. Read also: How time in front of the screen affects the development of babies: research
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