Even infants can tell the difference between naughty and nice playmates, and
know which to choose, a new study
finds.

Babies as young as 6 to
10 months old showed crucial social judging skills before they could talk,
according to a study by researchers at Yale University’s Infant Cognition
Center published in Thursday’s issue of journal
‘

Nature’

.

The
infants watched 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. They then were presented with the toys to see which they would
play with.

Nearly every baby
picked the helpful toy over the bad
one.

The babies also chose
neutral toys — ones that didn’t help or hinder — over the
naughty ones. And the babies chose the helping toys over the neutral
ones.

"It’s incredibly
impressive that babies can do this," said study lead author Kiley Hamlin, a Yale
psychology researcher. "It shows that we have these essential social skills
occurring without much explicit
teaching."

There was no
difference in reaction between boys and girls, but when the researchers took
away the large eyes that made the toys somewhat lifelike, the babies
didn’t show the same social judging skills, Hamlin
said.

The choice of nice over
naughty follows a school of thought that humans have some innate social
abilities, not just those learned from their
parents.

"We know that
they’re very, very social beings from very, very early on," Hamlin
said.

A study last year in
Germany showed 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 who
wasn’t part of the study, said the Yale research was intriguing. But he
doesn’t buy into the natural ability part. He said the behavior was
learned, and that the new research doesn’t prove
otherwise.

"Infants acquire a
great deal of social experience between birth and 6 months of age and thus the
assumption that this kind of capacity does not require experience is simply
unwarranted," Lewkowicz said in an e-mail interview. But the Yale team has other
preliminary research that shows similar responses even in three-month-olds,
Hamlin said.

Researchers also
want to know if the behavior is limited to human infants. The Yale team is
starting tests with monkeys, but has no results yet, Hamlin said.

Parents should be cautious
while presenting toys to their kids and be aware of the age-suitability of the
play things which are often mentioned on the packs.

Via Times of India