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They may be small and not be able to hold an adult conversation, but babies are proving their collective cleverness. As soon as scientists figured out smarter ways to uncover the wee ones’ abilities, they began finding infants’ skills are more than they’re cracked up to be.
Born to Dance
Speaking of music, babies can’t seem to resist it. Not only are their ears tuned to the beats, babies can actually dance in time with them, according to a study published in 2010.
To test babies’ dancing disposition, the researchers played recordings of classical music, rhythmic beats and speech to infants, and videotaped the results. They also recruited professional ballet dancers to analyze how well the babies matched their movements to the music.
The babies moved their arms, hands, legs, feet, torsos and heads in response to the music, much more than to speech. The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest this dancing ability is innate in humans, though the researchers aren’t sure why it evolved.
Learning quickly while sleeping
Babies can apparently learn even while asleep, according to a 2010 study. In experiments with 26 sleeping infants, each just 1 to 2 days old, scientists played a musical tone followed by a puff of air to their eyes 200 times over the course of a half-hour. A network of 124 electrodes stuck on the scalp and face of each baby also recorded brain activity during the experiments. The babies rapidly learned to anticipate a puff of air upon hearing the tone, showing a fourfold increase on average in the chances of tightening their eyelids in response to the sound by the end of each session.
As newborns spend most of their time asleep, this newfound ability might be crucial to rapidly adapt to the world around them and help to ensure their survival, researchers said. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Know their p’s and q’s
When we say babies do this and that even “before they learn to talk,” we’re obviously not including baby talk and other language smarts.
In a study published in the journal Science, researchers had 36 infants watch silent videos of three bilingual French-English speakers reciting sentences. After being trained to become comfortable with a speaker reciting a sentence in one language, babies ages 4 months and 6 months spent more time looking at a speaker reciting a sentence in a different language —demonstrating that they could tell the difference between the two.
“Newborns can be said to be ‘intelligent’ in that they have the ability to almost effortlessly learn any of the world’s languages,” psychologist George Hollich of Purdue University said. Some of Hollich’s research shows that babies start to understand grammar by the age of 15 months, processing grammar and words simultaneously.
Judge Character Well
Pegging another person as helpful or harmful is crucial when choosing friends. And that ability starts early. Kiley Hamlin of Yale University showed both 6- and 10-month-olds a puppet show of sorts with anthropomorphized shapes, in which one shape helped another climb a hill. In another scenario a third shape pushed the climber down. The little ones then got to choose which shape they preferred. For both age groups, most babies chose the helper shapes. This character-judging ability could be baby’s first step in the formation of morals, Hamlin speculated. The work was published in 2007 in the journal Nature.
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或许他们年纪尚幼，还不能像大人那样交谈，但是这些宝宝们个个都证明着他们的绝顶聪明。科学家们一找到更加高明的方法来发现这些小宝贝们的各种能力，就发现其实宝宝们会的东西比人们夸赞的还要多。
生而善舞
说到音乐，婴儿似乎无法抗拒。2010年发表的一项研究表明，婴儿不仅耳朵能辨别音乐的节奏，而且身体也能够与之呼应、随之起舞。
为了检测婴儿的舞蹈倾向，研究者们分别给婴儿播放古典音乐、节奏感强烈的音乐和演说，并将他们的反应拍摄下来。他们还请专业的芭蕾舞演员来分析宝宝们动作与音乐合拍的准确程度。
与演说相比，宝贝们对音乐的反应更加强烈，他们随着音乐挥着胳膊和小手、蹬起小腿、晃动身子和小脑袋。发表于《美国国家科学院院刊》的研究表明，这种舞蹈的能力是人类与生俱来的，不过研究者们尚不能确定为什么这种能力后天会变弱。
睡眠当中快速学习
2010年的一项研究显示，宝贝们显然在睡着的时候也能学习。该研究对26名出生只有一两天的熟睡中的婴儿进行实验；在历时30分钟的实验过程中，科学家们给婴儿每放一个乐音，就往其眼睛上吹口气，该过程重复200次。分布在婴儿头皮和脸上的124个电极网记录下实验过程中婴儿的脑部活动。婴儿们很快就能在听到乐音后预知到随后的吹气；到实验结束阶段，婴儿们听到乐声后就闭紧眼皮的或然性增加了四倍。
研究者们说，由于新生婴儿绝大部分时间都在睡眠中，婴儿们这项新近被发现的能力或许对于他们适应环境，帮助他们确保生存下来至关重要。本项研究发表于《美国国家科学院院刊》。
了解他们的语言
当我们说婴儿“在学会说话之前”就会这个或者那个的时候，显然没有把宝宝的语言和宝宝们其他的语言天赋包括在内。
在发表于《科学》杂志的一项研究中，研究者们让36名婴儿观看三个英法双语者背诵句子的默片。当经过训练习惯了一个说话者用一种语言背诵句子之后，4个月和6个月大的婴儿在观看说话者用另一种语言背诵句子时用时更长——表明他们能够区分这两种不同的语言。
“新生儿可以被称为‘聪明’，在于他们能够几乎不费吹灰之力地学习世界上的任何语言。”美国普渡大学的心理学家乔治﹒霍利奇如是说。他的部分研究表明，婴儿在15个月大时就开始理解语法——他们对语法和单词的加工同时进行。
能够判别人的好坏
择友的时候，判别某个人会给自己带来帮助还是伤害很重要；人们在很小的时候就具备这种本领了。耶鲁大学的吉雷﹒汉姆林给6个月和10个月大的婴儿看了一场木偶戏，戏中的小人具有不同的性格：一个小人帮助另一个小人爬山；而在另一个场景中，又有一个小人把爬上山的小人推了下去。然后这些婴儿来推选他们喜欢的小人；两个年龄组的大多数宝宝们都选了那个帮助别人的小人。汉姆林指出，这种识别好人和坏人的能力可以是宝贝们道德观形成的第一步。这项研究于2007年发表在《自然》杂志上。
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