How do babies think?

quote:

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Originally posted by Aelia Jusa:
Wow, that's really interesting, Moni. Thanks for sharing [img]smile.gif[/img] . An interesting thing about that is that you say you were talking really early, so maybe you were thinking and understanding things because you had language. I don't think most babies have the gifts you had, so maybe this agrees with the idea that you can't think until you have language.

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You're very welcome. [img]smile.gif[/img]

You know, the eyes can really tell you alot about an infants comprehension of what is going on about them. A newborn can recognize their parents within two months of age!

I know in my experiences with my own son that he could understand what I was saying and we could communicate even though at the time we developed communication between us (beyond his crying because he was wet, dirty or hungry) he was only 7-9 months old and could not yet speak...a kind of yes/no process of communication but there was more to it than just yes or no...there was understanding between us as to what he meant with certain hand motions and facial expressions.

Myself, as far back as I can remember, I cannot ever remember not knowing what people were saying until the "president" thing and I can remember things from when I was crawling and had a bottle, as well as a recurring dream I had for the first seven years of my life...it had always been with me.

I believe we are born with the ability to think, at least that what I can derive from my own memories and from my experience raising a baby.

[Aelia Jusa]

quote:

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Originally posted by Moni:


You're very welcome. [img]smile.gif[/img]

You know, the eyes can really tell you alot about an infants comprehension of what is going on about them. A newborn can recognize their parents within two months of age!

I know in my experiences with my own son that he could understand what I was saying and we could communicate even though at the time we developed communication between us (beyond his crying because he was wet, dirty or hungry) he was only 7-9 months old and could not yet speak...a kind of yes/no process of communication but there was more to it than just yes or no...there was understanding between us as to what he meant with certain hand motions and facial expressions.

Myself, as far back as I can remember, I cannot ever remember not knowing what people were saying until the "president" thing and I can remember things from when I was crawling and had a bottle, as well as a recurring dream I had for the first seven years of my life...it had always been with me.

I believe we are born with the ability to think, at least that what I can derive from my own memories and from my experience raising a baby.

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Yes, I certainly believe that babies of a very young age understand a lot about the world around them. They are certainly forming attachments and able to communicate their needs in ways that they know will be heard before they acquire language. And perhaps we are born with the ability to think. But this still leads me back to my original question - if babies are thinking before they have language, how do they do it?

[Scholarcs]

Well I dont know much about babies, but I do know that I have a cousin one year old who smiles whenever she sees me, as she has always done from the day she was born.

[Epona]

This is a fascinating subject - and particularly since Aelia mentioned animal intelligence, which is of real interest to me personally.

I honestly don't know anything about brain development in children, thank you Mouse for posting that link - not light reading, but very interesting if you take the time to read it with a big medical glossary to hand

But as usual with me, it is the animal intelligence sentence at the end of Aelia's first post that piques my interest, so I'll comment on that and hopefully it won't be too off topic!

Firstly, a link:
http://www.alexfoundation.org/

to current ongoing research into parrot intelligence (I'm sorry, I just know more about parrots than other animals, I know I'm a parrot bore) - this is a serious research project run by Dr Irene Pepperberg which has been going on for years, and has demonstrated that parrots don't just mimic when they learn to talk, but have complex mental processes - they have the cognitive abilities of a 3-4 year old child, putting them on a par with the great apes! This is in part explained by the fact that parrots are zygodactylous - they have 2 front toes and 2 back toes on each foot, meaning they are very dextrous and can manipulate objects, use tools etc, and are very long lived.

I'm not going to overstate it - this is basic intelligence, a parrot is never going to build a space shuttle or design a bridge. To paraphrase Pepperberg, a parrot won't ever tell you what it did yesterday, or what it expects from tomorrow - complex abstract thought is not the way their brain works. They can work out quite complex things in the here and now though, and will be innovative in tool use, trying out different things and learning from their successes and failures.

My baby Senegal parrot for example worked out with alarming speed how to open the door of his cage. He has a motivation to do this, obviously it is more fun to sit on me and cause havoc around the house! He would watch very carefully whenever I opened the door to let him out - although I don't know what was going through his head, I could see by his eye rings and head posture that he was focusing intently on my hand. After watching a few times, he started to try by himself, using his beak to squeeze pairs of bars together until he found the right pair - so motivation, observation, reasoning, and a little luck were involved. Then I put a screw-link on his door to keep it closed. Again he watched carefully, and now can undo the link halfway. (I have had this bird for 6 weeks). None of this is that astounding, but the roof of the cage also opens up - with a similar catch to the door. This baby parrot has made a logical connection, and even though I have NEVER opened the roof of his cage he is now working on opening the latches there too, using the same method as he used on the door.

There are some things which are beyond animal intelligence. Chimpanzees can be shown how to knap flint to get a basic sharp edge. If they are given flint, they can do this once shown. If they are given a flint knife, and a box with food inside, they will use the sharp edge to break open the box. However, give a chimp a piece of flint and a box of food, and it will not be able to make the connection between them - the knife goes unmade, and the food uneaten.

Another interesting piece of research which involved chimps - a trained chimp which was used to being given commands in English and showed understanding of many phrases, was shown two plates of food and told to choose one for himself. Instinctively, the chimp reaches for the bigger plate. When told to choose a plate of food to give to another chimp, the chimp again chooses the biggest plate, it is as if instinct won't allow him to choose the smaller plate, even if he will get more food as a result. The same chimp was taught basic counting, and could understand that 3 was greater than 2, 4 greater than 3 etc. - when the experiment was repeated using numbers to represent bananas instead of the physical presence of the plate of food, the chimp was able to select the smaller number of bananas for his companion so that he got more bananas - it was the presence of the food itself which caused instinct to override understanding.

Very interesting, sorry for the long post!

[Thoran]

Hi, it's the wife again. What a great post. I have some to add to that. I have seen footage of squid in separate tanks. #1 squid knew how to uncork a bottle to get the fish out, #2 did not. They were placed in adjacent tanks, and #1 was given a corked bottle to open, which he did, as #2 observed. The same type bottle then was placed in the #2's tank, and it was then able to open the bottle, having learned from watching #1.
That was really something!
I work with dogs, doing many different sports. My dogs know dozens of commands. Jack can discriminate between the words ball and frisbee, and will hunt through the house to find the correct one. He remembers where he last put things much better than I can. I can direct him through an obstical course, and he can discriminate btween 'jump' and 'tunnel' and 'teeter' in seconds.

I think that we as humans put much more emphasis on language and higher thought because it makes us 'better'. We may be more intelligent in some ways, but we are vastly deficient in others. I would have a very difficult time in agility(a dog sport) if the roles were reversed, and I had to run flat out, jumping and weaving and make split second decisions based on a unreliable handler and not trip or knock myself out cold. You could call it reactions, but when an athlete hones his abilities to perfection, say in basketball, we don't watch and say, wow, look how reactive he is. Michael Jorden is a physical genius. He is pretty rough compared to a lemur, or a porpose, or a cat. I would like to see him do what my dogs do.

As far as babies, as someone who spent 10 years working with kids, the thoughts seem to gain complexity as the vocabulary develops. I am not sure how much of that is coincidence. An infant just isn't aware of himself in the way an adult is, that is in relation to others. An infant seems to feel more directly, without associations, where as an adult takes what he feels and anylizes it (sometimes to death)and compares it to what he knows and feels about things. I see the same behavior in dogs, a puppy is much more open and reactive, where in an adult dog, you can gage the response based on the experiences the dog has had. Interesting stuff....
Jen

[Aelia Jusa]

quote:

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Originally posted by Thoran:
Hi, it's the wife again. What a great post. I have some to add to that. I have seen footage of squid in separate tanks. #1 squid knew how to uncork a bottle to get the fish out, #2 did not. They were placed in adjacent tanks, and #1 was given a corked bottle to open, which he did, as #2 observed. The same type bottle then was placed in the #2's tank, and it was then able to open the bottle, having learned from watching #1.
That was really something!
I work with dogs, doing many different sports. My dogs know dozens of commands. Jack can discriminate between the words ball and frisbee, and will hunt through the house to find the correct one. He remembers where he last put things much better than I can. I can direct him through an obstical course, and he can discriminate btween 'jump' and 'tunnel' and 'teeter' in seconds.

I think that we as humans put much more emphasis on language and higher thought because it makes us 'better'. We may be more intelligent in some ways, but we are vastly deficient in others. I would have a very difficult time in agility(a dog sport) if the roles were reversed, and I had to run flat out, jumping and weaving and make split second decisions based on a unreliable handler and not trip or knock myself out cold. You could call it reactions, but when an athlete hones his abilities to perfection, say in basketball, we don't watch and say, wow, look how reactive he is. Michael Jorden is a physical genius. He is pretty rough compared to a lemur, or a porpose, or a cat. I would like to see him do what my dogs do.

As far as babies, as someone who spent 10 years working with kids, the thoughts seem to gain complexity as the vocabulary develops. I am not sure how much of that is coincidence. An infant just isn't aware of himself in the way an adult is, that is in relation to others. An infant seems to feel more directly, without associations, where as an adult takes what he feels and anylizes it (sometimes to death)and compares it to what he knows and feels about things. I see the same behavior in dogs, a puppy is much more open and reactive, where in an adult dog, you can gage the response based on the experiences the dog has had. Interesting stuff....
Jen

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Thanks Jen and Epona [img]smile.gif[/img] .

Yes I've seen giant squid learning a maze-like structure in order to get a food reward. Not only could they learn a pattern and remember directions, but also could associate shape and colour when they were put in a different environment. It was amazing [img]smile.gif[/img] .

I agree with you that "intelligence" and reasoning ability is used by humans to discriminate us from everything else, in fact a lot of people think that animals aren't independently valuable because they aren't intelligent so should be eaten or used in other ways for our convenience. Though many of those same people think dogs should be not eaten because they pass some threshold of intelligence that makes them worthy of life. I'm not sure how they justify eating pigs then, since I think they are similarly intelligent to dogs, but that's another issue.

I certainly believe that some animals are capable of thinking, though I think that having intelligence and being able to follow commands is not quite the same thing as actually thinking. I saw footage of a chimp working out how to get a banana that was hanging out of reach, by stacking boxes together, in a manner that would not fall over, which I think must have involved some reasoning, though also a lot of animals' "tricks" are a result of trial and error learning, which is does not require as much sophistication of thought as actual reasoning.

It's also interesting your comments on babies' thoughts increasing in complexity as their vocabulary develops. The idea of thinking is somewhat slippery, it's hard to define, but I see it as sort of talking to myself in my head. You hear people who are bilingual saying that they can think in two languages. Thinking seems to be related, if not dependent on, language. So it doesn't surprise me that babies think better when they have more words. Also I've read studies and seen footage of chimps learning "language" - sign language and also pictorial language. With the picture language especially, the chimp could make complex sentences that she had never seen before using the pictures she knew. Perhaps here she was thinking with the pictures in her mind?

[Aelia Jusa]

quote:

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Originally posted by Epona:

Firstly, a link:
http://www.alexfoundation.org/

to current ongoing research into parrot intelligence (I'm sorry, I just know more about parrots than other animals, I know I'm a parrot bore) - this is a serious research project run by Dr Irene Pepperberg which has been going on for years, and has demonstrated that parrots don't just mimic when they learn to talk, but have complex mental processes - they have the cognitive abilities of a 3-4 year old child, putting them on a par with the great apes! This is in part explained by the fact that parrots are zygodactylous - they have 2 front toes and 2 back toes on each foot, meaning they are very dextrous and can manipulate objects, use tools etc, and are very long lived.

I'm not going to overstate it - this is basic intelligence, a parrot is never going to build a space shuttle or design a bridge. To paraphrase Pepperberg, a parrot won't ever tell you what it did yesterday, or what it expects from tomorrow - complex abstract thought is not the way their brain works. They can work out quite complex things in the here and now though, and will be innovative in tool use, trying out different things and learning from their successes and failures.

My baby Senegal parrot for example worked out with alarming speed how to open the door of his cage. He has a motivation to do this, obviously it is more fun to sit on me and cause havoc around the house! He would watch very carefully whenever I opened the door to let him out - although I don't know what was going through his head, I could see by his eye rings and head posture that he was focusing intently on my hand. After watching a few times, he started to try by himself, using his beak to squeeze pairs of bars together until he found the right pair - so motivation, observation, reasoning, and a little luck were involved. Then I put a screw-link on his door to keep it closed. Again he watched carefully, and now can undo the link halfway. (I have had this bird for 6 weeks). None of this is that astounding, but the roof of the cage also opens up - with a similar catch to the door. This baby parrot has made a logical connection, and even though I have NEVER opened the roof of his cage he is now working on opening the latches there too, using the same method as he used on the door.

There are some things which are beyond animal intelligence. Chimpanzees can be shown how to knap flint to get a basic sharp edge. If they are given flint, they can do this once shown. If they are given a flint knife, and a box with food inside, they will use the sharp edge to break open the box. However, give a chimp a piece of flint and a box of food, and it will not be able to make the connection between them - the knife goes unmade, and the food uneaten.

Another interesting piece of research which involved chimps - a trained chimp which was used to being given commands in English and showed understanding of many phrases, was shown two plates of food and told to choose one for himself. Instinctively, the chimp reaches for the bigger plate. When told to choose a plate of food to give to another chimp, the chimp again chooses the biggest plate, it is as if instinct won't allow him to choose the smaller plate, even if he will get more food as a result. The same chimp was taught basic counting, and could understand that 3 was greater than 2, 4 greater than 3 etc. - when the experiment was repeated using numbers to represent bananas instead of the physical presence of the plate of food, the chimp was able to select the smaller number of bananas for his companion so that he got more bananas - it was the presence of the food itself which caused instinct to override understanding.

Very interesting, sorry for the long post!

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Yes indeed, very interesting, thanks Epona [img]smile.gif[/img] . I haven't gone to the link yet, but I'm going to, I'm trying to figure out how they would discover that a bird's cognitive abilites were on a par with a 3 year old child and am coming up empty - sounds fascinating [img]smile.gif[/img] . Perhaps the birds learning to talk, if they are not mimicing, are actually grasping the idea of words symbolising objects and concepts, very simply of course, but that's still amazing. Especially because their brains are so small, lol .

Actually I've read about some apes who actually do construct their own tools. Certainly apes have reasonably sophisticated systems of communication, which would suggest that they are thinking not just reacting to stimuli. I was thinking last night, and I realised that my thinking is not just words, though it mainly is, but also remembering images and creating new images - perhaps this is what goes on in animals' and babies' brains in the absence of formal language. It might be more efficient, or more conducive to deep thought to use language in thinking, so as babies get more developed their simple system of image representation is replaced by the more complex and scope-widening system of language.

[Sir Kenyth]

Guys, your so close to the answer that you can't see it. We don't "think in words". That is to say that we don't require words for thinking. We translate our thought into words consistently because it is so natural to do so. Expressing ourselves with words is something we must nearly do all the time, so the process becomes nearly instinctual. So much so that we can beleive it to be the only way. I personally think without words all the time. Havn't you ever had a thought that you couldn't express in words? Thoughts consist of much more than the verbal translation. They consist of feelings, imagery, sensation, comparison, and the hardest part to comprehend, the abstract. Thought is natural and instinctual, words are a learned translation of those thoughts.