WASHINGTON, Sept 15: Scientists have found that 8-month-old infants expect objects they identify as animals to have insides, suggesting that babies have a core understanding of biology.
University of Illinois professor of psychology, Renee Baillargeon, who led the new study with graduate student Peipei Setoh, said that many psychologists have theorised that babies are born with core physical and psychological frameworks that help them navigate the world.
For instance, when babies see a self-propelled object, their core physical framework leads them to understand that the object has internal energy.
Also when babies see that an object has control over its actions (that is, responds to changes in its environment), their core psychological framework leads them to view the object as an agent that has mental states.
“In each case, babies seem to be born equipped with abstract expectations that drive their reasoning,” Baillargeon said.
For a long time, researchers debated whether in addition to these physical and psychological expectations, infants also possess biological expectations that orient them to think about animals the right way.
“Our contribution was to find a way to tackle this question experimentally, by asking what young babies know about animals’ insides,” Baillargeon said.
Researchers have previously found that preschool-age children possess biological knowledge about animals’ insides.
“Young children expect animals to have different insides from inanimate objects, and they realise that an animal’s insides are important for its survival,” Setoh said.
“They know that if you remove the insides, the animal can’t function,” Setoh added.
The researchers theorised babies expect animals to have insides because they possess a core understanding of biology in addition to their core understandings of physics and psychology.
“These findings go against previous claims that babies have no core understanding of biology. Now that we have shown babies expect totally novel animals to have insides, it calls these claims into question,” Baillargeon said.
A second explanation for this behaviour is that babies’ expectations about animals and their insides are tied to the cognitive systems humans evolved to deal with predators and prey – in other words, to deal with animals as a food source.
The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (PTI)
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