Babies Identify Real Objects from Pictures as Early as 9 months, Study

A new study claims that babies display the ability to identify real objects from pictures by the time they are nine months old.

It is well known that the first few years of a child's life are a prime time for learning. Even before they can talk, they communicate through gestures.  A new study, done in collaboration with researchers at the University of London, Royal Holloway and the University of South Carolina, found that babies successfully pick real life objects from pictures well before their first birthday.

"The study should interest any parent or caregiver who has ever read a picture book with an infant," Dr Jeanne Shinskey, from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, said in a statement. "For parents and educators, these findings suggest that, well before their first birthdays and their first words, babies are capable of learning about the real world indirectly from picture books, at least those that have very realistic images like photographs."

One fact that needs to be accepted is that infants are much smarter than we earlier thought. Several research studies focused on infant cognition. A recent study by researchers at the University of Chicago found that babies of nine months can make inferences about socials ties by simply observing the likes and dislikes of people around them.

Apart from this, their ability to retain information kickstarts right from when they are in their mother's womb. A study by researchers at the University of Helsinki found that infants recognize the lullabies heard in the womb for several months after birth. It reveled how fetuses can recognize and remember sounds produced in the outside world.

In the current study, researchers conducted a study on eight and nine month old babies. The study included 30 babies and all of them were familiarized with a life-sized photo of a toy for nearly a minute. After which the babies were placed before the toy in the picture as well as a different toy.

The researchers noticed the babies' initial reaction. In one test, they tested the infants' simple object recognition for the target toy by placing both objects before them and then placing the toys inside transparent containers.

In the second test, they checked the ability of the infant to create a continued mental idea of the target toy by first showing the toys and then hiding them from view by placing the toys inside opaque containers.

The researchers observed that when the toys were placed inside visible container the babies went for the one that was not in picture, indicating that they identified the pictured toy and found it less interesting than the new toy.

When the toys were placed in opaque containers the babies displayed an opposite inclination.  They opted for the one that they seen in the photo, indicating the babies had framed a constant mental idea.

Dr Shinskey said, "These findings show that one brief exposure to a picture of a toy affects infants' actions with the real toy by the time they reach nine-months-old. It also demonstrates that experience with a picture of something can strengthen babies' ideas of an object so they can maintain it after the object disappears - so out of sight is not out of mind."

The study was published in Child Development.