Babies begin to distinguish behaviors at six months

A child's behavior depends on many factors. Some are innate and others learned, however it is curious to know that some of those we believe are learned seem to come written in our genetic code.

Babies begin to distinguish good behavior when they are only six months old. This does not mean that at six months they know what it means to behave well or badly, because the idea of ​​what is right or wrong is so vague for them that it makes no sense to expect them to know it (and what is more they understand our prayers or our prohibitions), but it does show that babies could come with a certain predisposition to accept good behaviors and reject not-so-good ones.

A recent study conducted in the Infant Cognition Center Yale University, in the US, has investigated babies between 6 and 10 months to assess what moral judgments they make to some observed behaviors.

For this they used wooden figures that served as puppets, with which they represented small functions. In one of them, a red ball was trying to climb a hill. Sometimes a yellow triangle helped the red ball to achieve its goal, but in others a blue square prevented the ball from reaching its destination.

After watching the show several times the yellow and blue figures were offered to the babies. 80% of babies stayed with the kind yellow triangle, who was the one who had helped the red ball up the hill.

In another experiment a stuffed dog was used that wanted to open a box. A bear came to help him, while another tried to prevent him. As with the first case, the majority of babies chose the teddy collaborator.

In the last experiment a cat played with a ball, losing it several times. In this situation, a rabbit retrieved the ball to return it while another took it and took it. The children chose the collaborating character again. Even the oldest slapped the thief rabbit.

All this comes to show us that Babies already have certain notions of what is right and wrong or what are the morally appropriate behaviors and which are not and also makes us reflect on how much they can capture from our behavior even when we think they do not know what is happening around them because they are so small.

Video: Developmental Stages for Baby: 6-8 months - Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center (March 2024).