Social Babies by Claudia Sonea

We are not only smart since the day we are born, but also we have very good skills in social judgments. According to a study by researchers at Yale University's Infant Cognition Center published in Thursday's journal Nature carried on babies between 6 and 10 months crucial social skills appear early in our life and is no longer a matter of experience. The study implied babies watching a googly-eyed wooden toy trying to climb roller-coaster hills and then another googly-eyed toy come by and either help it over the mountain or push it backward. Afterwards they had to choose from the two toys the one they wanted to play with. Almost all the infants chose the helpful one over the naughty one. Moreover, when neutral toys were introduced, they still chose the helpful ones and then the neutral. Kiley Hamlin, a Yale psychology researcher who led the study, stated that there was no difference in reaction between genders. However, there was a change when the eye was taken from the toy, the babies did not show anymore the same social judging. Despite the fact that another study performed in Germany comes in her support showing that babies as young as 18 months old overwhelmingly helped out when they could, such as by picking up toys that researchers dropped, David Lewkowicz, a psychology professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton crumbled the theory and said that babies acquire a great deal of social experience between birth and 6 months of age thus it is normal to show such judgments. He persists in saying that the behavior was learned, acquired through experience and it's absurd to think otherwise. Finally, who knows where the truth lies? It's important that we both cultivate the social skills and have them from the day we are birth, so we can improve them by experience. Enjoy!

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071121/ap_on_re_us/infant_judging;_ylt=AkIbNekZez8tyZ04n_dXoFas0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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