What do Babies Think (Ted Talk) PDF

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This paper is a commentary on the scientific talk "What do Babies Think" and explores the mind of child from a psychological point of view. ...

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Jordan Walker Introduction to Psychology Professor Troy Smith 27 April 2018

What do babies think? Ted Talk Commentary Thirty years ago psychologists believed that babies were unable to think rationally, see life through another person’s perspective, and acted with egocentric motives. However, strides in developmental psychology have changed this belief. In her Ted Talk, Alison Gopnik explores the mind of young children and babies to compare them to their adult counterparts. In her research, Gopnik found that eighteen-month-old children were able to understand life through another perspective. In her experiment, the children were presented with two bowls of food, one containing broccoli and the other containing crackers. The researcher pretended to prefer a certain food over the other one and then proceeded to extend her hand. Interestingly, not only could the baby understand that the researcher didn’t like a certain food but acted in a helpful way, either placing broccoli or crackers in their hand. Thus, this proved that children often do not think egocentrically. However, fifteen-month-old children could not understand the profound concept and reacted differently in the same situation. Furthermore, Gopnik explores how certain animals are suited to very particular jobs, such as a chicken who spends most of its life pecking at the ground for food. She compares this to a crow, who doesn’t have a particular job but spends a large portion of its life caring for its young. Gopnik suggests that there is a correlation between how long an animal is dependent on their

mother and their intelligence. Because human babies are dependent on their caretakers for long periods of time, they have more time to learn, grow, and think than other animals. This provides evolutionary benefits, as we can take the skills that we learned as a child and apply them to our lives as adults. Through a series of activities, Gopnik was also able to see that children can unconsciously use statistics to discover how certain machines work and make decisions based on those discoveries. In addition, the children were also able to go through their various hypothesis about difficult ideas, such as electricity to reach a goal. So, what does this mean about a child’s brain? Gopnik suggests that despite contrary belief, children are often more conscious than their adult counterparts. In her research, MRI tests revealed that when an adult thinks about various situations and attempts to solve a problem, the area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex is most active. However, when children are presented when similar situations, several areas of the brain become active, suggesting that a child is just as capable of solving a problem as an adult but finds difficulty in narrowing down numerous solutions to a more effective one. In conclusion, Gopnik states that the adult brain is extraordinary. However, she also explores the idea that to get the most out of our brain power, we should begin to think more like our younger counterparts....