Babies Are Smarter Than Adults In Some Areas

[Plenoptic 0]

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

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Recently, scientists have learned the following:
* At a few days old, infants can pick out their native tongue from a foreign one.
* At 4 or 5 months, infants can lip read, matching faces on silent videos to "ee" and "ah" sounds.
* Infants can recognize the consonants and vowels of all languages on Earth, and they can hear the difference between foreign language sounds that elude most adults.
* Infants in their first six months can tell the difference between two monkey faces that an older person would say are identical, and they can match calls that monkeys make with pictures of their faces.
* Infants are rhythm experts, capable of differentiating between the beats of their culture and another.


The latest finding, presented in the May 25 issue of the journal Science, is that infants just 4 months old can tell whether someone is speaking in their native tongue or not without any sound, just by watching a silent movie of their speech. This ability disappears by the age of 8 months, however, unless the child grows up in a bilingual environment and therefore needs to use the skill.

In fact, all the skills outlined above decline somewhere around the time infants pass the 6-month mark and learn to ignore information that bears little on their immediate environment.

I think it's pretty amazing how infants can tell the difference between their own and another language just by seeing the lip movement. So this helps point out that as infants we have a lot of qualities that if we don't use all the time will end up disappearing and we'd have to relearn them which can be very hard to do in some cases. No wonder it is easier to learn different languages as a younger child because we have the ability to distinguish between them and of course pronounce the words. I've read elsewhere that most know how to roll the R when they are infants but since we don't use it, it will be harder to learn how to do later in life. It explains more in the article how they found some of the knowledge infants have before 6 months. If you try to apply these traits to a child like speaking in many different languages from when they are infants past the 6 month spot maybe they will be able to hold onto their knowledge. I hope what I'm saying makes sense.

[salamangkero 0]

I'm not too sure about the entire article but I do concede that as babies, we pretty much have a blank slate, or "tabula rasa". We don't easily have prejudice regarding certain things. For example, if we, as adults, were told that sheep fly, we'd immediately reject the notion as impossible. Infants, on the other hand, will probably accept it as truth or, at least, mull it over as something that could be true.What I'm saying is that the years of experience and education that has, so far, honed most of our skills are also the very objects impeding our acquisition of new skills. Language, especially, is a difficult thing to learn. Learning a new language as an adult is quite different from learning as infants. Infants learning a language would associate the foreign word directly with the object it refers to. We, grownups, on the other hand, associate the foreign word with a word from our own language and that, in turn, is associated to the object itself. This additional redirection is, perhaps, a source of impedance, along with our preconceptions of grammar and diction.As a person who likes babies only as the world's best hors d'Oeuvres, I don't generally like to admit they're smarter than us. In some areas, yeah, they beat us because they're more receptive to new information but I still say we're much better off as we are right now. Grown-ups. Supposedly, that is

[dre 0]

I think it's the fact that adults try to use the same sounds of their current language to try and pronounce the language they're trying to learn. It's usually hard to make them forget about using what they already know and use unfamiliar sounds.

[Misanthrope 0]

As a person who likes babies only as the world's best hors d'Oeuvres,

That would have to be the most deliciously misanthropic prose I've heard in quite some time. Bravo! Me - I like 'em served up as the main entree, but I digress. While I buy into the "tabula rasa" to some extent, the blank slate philosophy is at odds with my misanthropic world view, which sees all forms of human life as inherently evil, and all babies born into original sin until they see fit to claw their way out of their miserable lot.
Back to the topic, I admit I haven't given the subject enough srutiny to offer an educated opinion, only a personal one based on subjective bias and an inane dislike of all things 'infant" (at least I'm honest). And like the previous author, I hate to give those foul smelling little feces machines more credit than they deserve.

My theory is a bizarre one with no rational basis, and that is babies (I still shudder at that word) have a sort of genetic/cellular recall that "remembers" or taps into the archetypal patterns of it's "tribe's" collective mentality. And this, of course, extends to language skills and other abilities peculiar to it's specific culture. Somewhere along the line, most humans lose the ability to access this part of their makeup. Perhaps this is a good thing, because escaping tribal mentality allows the development of something better: the individual.

[Forbez 0]

I thought everyone already knew this. Babaies learn faster then adults as well.

[hippiman 0]

Before you say that babies are smarter than adults, you have to define "smart". Does it mean that you learn faster, you know more facts, or that you are wise(like being able to come up with the thing like that king in the Bible that said he was going to cut a baby in half so he could see who the mother was)? Actually, I just looked it up on dictionary.reference.com and most of the definitions of it had something to do with pain. It's weird how words get changed through time like that.Anyways, if you are using the fast learning definition of smart, it's correct to say that babies are smarter than adults. But if you define smart as knowing facts or being wise, you're wrong; because both of those require experience. Babies have to be able to learn fast if they're going to be able to survive; and it's a lot easier for them, because of the "tabula rasa" thing, like salamangkerosaid. You can learn a lot faster if you don't have to check what you're learning with you're past experiences to see if it's valid, but then again, you could end up learning something that's wrong(and who's there to say that everything we already know isn't wrong?).But I guess you're right about babies being "smarter" than adults, if you use the right definition.

[Tetraca 0]

Sometimes I have to wonder if that's true!

Edited May 30, 2007 by Tetraca (see edit history)

[sylenzednuke 0]

I agree with mostly what Misanthrope and salamangkero said here.

I don't really think that these tests might be doubtful, it all looks completely possible as a fact.

We already have things in our brain, and so it's not that easy to comprehend each and every thing absolutely new kept in front of us.

What I'm saying is that the years of experience and education that has, so far, honed most of our skills are also the very objects impeding our acquisition of new skills. Language, especially, is a difficult thing to learn. Learning a new language as an adult is quite different from learning as infants. Infants learning a language would associate the foreign word directly with the object it refers to. We, grownups, on the other hand, associate the foreign word with a word from our own language and that, in turn, is associated to the object itself. This additional redirection is, perhaps, a source of impedance, along with our preconceptions of grammar and diction.

I completely agree to this! It couldn't have been said in a better way for a layman to understand... Real life experience, Marathi (My state language.) has a different grammar form, sentence formation and stuff like that so it's so hard to get acquainted to that language. On the other hand, Hindi and English aren't that different from each in sentence formation and grammar, if they are, it's most probably the exact opposite which is easy to figure out too.
Making out the difference between two languages by having a look at the lip movements is quite fascinating! I guess we are more used to our native tongue than English, so it shows in the way the muscles in our lips move and that might make them conclude that.

And I couldn't agree more with hippiman too!

*decides to reply faster to topics so that he gets a chance to say something instead of just agreeing over things and backing them up with examples*