Babies Can Think about Abstract Relations Before They Can Speak

It turns out that babies can think before they can speak. Scientists have found that 7-month-old infants can understand the simplest and most basic abstract relation-that of sameness and difference between things.

Two apples can be considered the same, just as two mice can be considered the same. This is called analogical ability, which is the ability to see common relations between objects, events or ideas. It's a key skill that underlies human intelligence.

There is considerable evidence that preschoolers can learn abstract relations, but scientists have been unsure whether infants can as well. That's why researchers decided to conduct a series of experiments to find out.

In this case, the researchers tested the infants with two Elmo dolls and an Elmo doll and a toy camel. The researchers found that the infants looked longer at pairs showing the novel relation, even when the test pairs were composed of new objects. In other words, infants who had learned the same relation looked longer at test pairs showing the different relation during the test, and vice versa. This suggests that the babies had encoded the abstract relation and detected when the relation changed.

"This suggests that a skill key to human intelligence is present very early in human development, and that language skills are not necessarily for learning abstract relations," said Alissa Ferry, the lead researcher, in a news release. "We found that infants are capable of learning these relations. Additionally, infants exhibit the same patterns of learning as older children and adults-relational learning benefits from seeing multiple examples of the relation and impeded when attention is drawn to the individual objects composing the relation."

The findings reveal that this skill is known early on in human development. This, in turn, may tell researchers a bit more about how children learn new skills.

The findings are published in the journal Child Development.

For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).