Researchers have used a robot car to show a baby’s development is linked to the timeliness of responses they receive when interacting.
A team from Cornell University, in the United States, found the timing of others’ reactions to a baby’s babbling was key to how they began learning language and social norms.
Professor Michael Goldstein said researchers designed a remote-controlled car to study the importance in early development of “contingency”, or a caregivers’ responses close in time to a baby’s behaviour.
Professor Goldstein said babies formed strong expectations that the car would be responsive, showing they were highly flexible in what they would learn from contingently, even including machines that lack human features.
“Deploying a remote-controlled car that would approach and produce speech sounds in response to babbling, researchers found that within 10 minutes, babies formed strong expectations that the car would respond to their vocalizations.
“When it stopped doing so, the babies erupted in bursts of babbling and play directed at the car – a stronger reaction than when they were communicating with people.”
Professor Goldstein said the study showed that in early development, foundational learning about where to direct one’s attention hinged on “contingency”.
He said the findings countered assumptions by some developmental psychologists that babies, like other slowly-developing animals, relied on built-in, genetically based knowledge, such as face recognition, to learn.
“We’re showing the opposite. What’s built into the baby is to pay attention to timing, and the world takes care of the rest. Babies are learning machines, and it’s on the adults to be responsive in the right ways to drive that learning.”
