Social Skills in Infants?

Babies as young as six months develop “social judging skills before they [can] talk,” say researchers at Yale University, U.S.A. Babies aged six months to ten months watched a large-eyed toy try to climb hills, while other toys either helped it or pushed it backward. The children were then “presented with the toys to see which they would play with,” explains the Houston Chronicle.

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Born to Dance?

“Humans have a unique ability to coordinate their motor movements to an external auditory stimulus, as in music-induced foot tapping or dancing,” says a report published by researchers from the universities of York, England, and Jyva¨ skyla¨ , Finland. The researchers found that even before infants learned to speak, they responded to the rhythm of music and spontaneously tried tomove in time with the beat. The more successful their attempts, the longer they smiled. This suggests that the sense of rhythmand a desire to move with music are not something we pick up but something that comes naturally.

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Those Awesome Baby Brains

They are awesome from their beginning. Three weeks after conception, they start out with 125,000 cells and thereafter increase in spurts of 250,000 cells a minute. Each little brain continues its explosive growth until at birth its cells number some 100,000,000,000—as many as there are stars in the Milky Way!

But months before that, while still in the womb, baby’s brain has gone into operation. It is registering perceptions from its watery environment. It hears, tastes, senses light, reacts to touch, learns, and remembers. The mother’s emotions can affect it. Gentle words or soft music calms it. Angry speech or rock music agitates it. The mother’s rhythmic heartbeat soothes it. But if fear sets her heart racing, soon baby’s heart beats twice as fast. A distressed mother transmits anxiety to the babe in her womb. A tranquil mother carries a peaceful baby. A joyful mother may make the babe in her womb jump for joy. All of this and more keeps baby’s brain busy. Even in the womb it is awesome.

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In What Language a Baby Crying?

"From the age of two days, a baby crying in his mother tongue tone," said the researchers from the University of Wurzburg, Germany.

The researchers record the cries of 30 infants from the French, and 30 infants from germany, and analyze the frequency, patterns of melodies, and high-low tone. The crying baby from the french often start with low and then rising tone, while the baby from germany, often starting with high tones and then the lower.

Both groups of infants are imitating the typical pattern of the language of their parents. Thus, it is believed that language development begins in the womb and infant language began with his first cry.

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