Bringing Up Baby

Bababa, dadada, ahgaga. Got that? Babies are speaking to us all the time, but most of us have no clue what they're saying. To us non-babies, it all sounds like charming, mysterious gobbledegook. To researchers, though, babbling conveys important information about a baby's readiness to learn. This week, we'll revisit a favorite episode exploring the language and behavior of the newest members of the human family.

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Bringing Up Baby

/ November 23, 2018

Bababa, dadada, ahgaga. Got that? Babies are speaking to us all the time, but most of us have no clue what they’re saying. To us non-babies, it all sounds like charming, mysterious gobbledegook. To researchers, though, babbling conveys important information about a baby’s readiness to learn. This week, we’ll revisit a favorite episode exploring the language and behavior of the newest members of the human family.

If you like this show, please check out our new podcast, ! And if you’d like to support our work, you can do so at .

Transcript

*The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode.
Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio.*

SHANKAR VEDANTAM, HOST: Hey, there. Shankar here. Quick note about today's episode - this show is what we call a radio replay, meaning it's one that we recently put out on the radio version of HIDDEN BRAIN and have decided to drop back into our podcast feed. It features a podcast episode from last May called Baby Talk. We love the story because it gives us new ways to think about how to communicate with small children, plus the sounds of babbling babies are incredibly cute. The second half of the show features a 2017 episode called Kinder-Gardening. It's a conversation with psychology professor Alison Gopnik who makes the case that less really is more when it comes to parenting. Hope you enjoy it. We'll be back next with a new episode.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)VEDANTAM: This is HIDDEN BRAIN. I'm Shankar Vedantam. There's a video on YouTube you might have seen. It has nearly 200 million views. In this video, a pair of twin brothers are standing in a kitchen having a little chat.(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO)UNIDENTIFIED INFANTS: (Babbling).VEDANTAM: These twin brothers...(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO)UNIDENTIFIED INFANTS: (Babbling).VEDANTAM: ...Are diaper-clad babies. Now, if this video featured 10-year-old twins or adult twins, I guarantee you it wouldn't have gone viral. What makes this video special is that we have no clue what these babies are saying. To us non-babies, it sounds like gobbledygook - cute, mysterious gobbledygook.(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO)UNIDENTIFIED INFANTS: (Babbling).VEDANTAM: Here at HIDDEN BRAIN, we love trying to understand the puzzles and contradictions of human behavior, but we spend most of our time talking about the older members of the human race. Today, we focus on the younger set - the much younger set.LAURA CIRELLI: I find babies are so impressive. We can't really ask them what they're thinking. We have to come up with clever ways of figuring out what's going on in their little brains.VEDANTAM: Later in the show, we'll hear from a researcher who says parents are often misguided when they try to steer their children's lives.ALISON GOPNIK: If you just do the right things, get the right skills, read the right books, you're going to be able to shape your child into a particular kind of adult.VEDANTAM: But first, we'll start with the language of babies, even babies who don't speak words.(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO)UNIDENTIFIED INFANTS: (Babbling).(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)CIRELLI: Hi, I'm Laura Cirelli.VEDANTAM: When Laura was in college, she spent her summer vacations back home in Sudbury, Ontario. And she worked at the Magical Nook, a day care center.CIRELLI: It was a large center that had different age groups, so there was a baby room and a toddler room, preschoolers, school-age children. But my favorite room was the toddler room for sure.VEDANTAM: Laura's job was to help the teachers at the center engage with the kids and enforce the rules.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)VEDANTAM: Music was an essential tool.CIRELLI: We would sing "Wheels On The Bus..."(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEELS ON THE BUS")UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) The wheels on the bus go round and round.CIRELLI: "...Old MacDonald..."(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OLD MACDONALD HAD A FARM")UNIDENTIFIED SINGER #1: (Singing) Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O.CIRELLI: If we didn't sing the clean up song with the preschoolers, then I don't think anything would have ever gotten cleaned up.(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BARNEY AND FRIENDS")UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing) Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere.CIRELLI: But as soon as we started, it seemed to be the trick to convince them that, yes, they were willing to put their toys away.(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BARNEY AND FRIENDS")UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As Baby Bop) Such a mess.VEDANTAM: Laura regularly found herself in awe of the toddlers.CIRELLI: One little kid who I had a good connection with, she grabbed my hand and brought me over to the little slide, and she really wanted to go down the slide. You could tell. So I helped her up the little stairs, and I caught her at the bottom of the slide. And all the rest of the toddlers in this playground just looked over and saw her and looked at each other and then ran over to the slide and formed a cute little lineup waiting their turn for me to help them down.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)VEDANTAM: Laura's days at the Magical Nook are over. She is now a professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and her work focuses on early childhood development. With years of knowledge now under her belt, she looks back on that moment at the slide and sees it as a form of communication.CIRELLI: In order for kids to look around and see what their peers are doing and to understand the goals that are embedded in those activities and to then realize that they need to follow the social construct of lining up, it seems like a super simple thing, but there's a lot of understanding about themselves, about other people, about goals and activities that they need to really completely understand in order for that to happen.VEDANTAM: Laura says actions like standing in line for the slide can be categorized as prosocial behaviors. They're actions we take to help others and to benefit the group. She decided to study what she'd seen on the playground more systematically. She invited a bunch of parents to bring their toddlers into the lab.CIRELLI: We were specifically testing 14-month-old babies. So they're walking. They're not quite talking.VEDANTAM: These 14-month-olds said bye-bye to Mommy and Daddy and then were strapped into front-facing baby carriers worn by assistants in the study. The researchers turned on some music.CIRELLI: Usually, it was "Twist And Shout" playing the background.(SOUNDBITE OF BEATLES SONG, "TWIST AND SHOUT")VEDANTAM: And the person carrying the baby began to bounce.CIRELLI: It was like (rhythmic clapping) so we would bounce them down on one beat and up on the other, down and up sort of thing.VEDANTAM: So if you're this baby, you're strapped onto someone's chest, you can't see their face. Instead, you're looking in front of you at another assistant.CIRELLI: The person facing the baby would either move in synchrony with how they were being bounced, so they're bouncing together, or they would move either too quickly or too slowly so that their movements weren't aligned with what the baby was experiencing.VEDANTAM: After about 2 1/2 minutes, the bouncing stopped and the baby was removed from the carrier.CIRELLI: And then this person who had faced them and moved either in or out of sync with them would perform some little, simple social games with them. So she would do things like draw pictures with markers or throw paper balls in a bucket.VEDANTAM: Every now and then, the assistant who had faced the baby would drop a marker or paper ball...UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Oops.VEDANTAM: ...And then pretend like the object was out of reach.CIRELLI: She would reach pathetically for them for about 30 seconds. And we looked to see what the babies did in this really weird situation where this person they just met needs help but isn't really asking for help and doesn't really seem to be able to achieve their goal on their own.VEDANTAM:

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