HUMAN EVOLUTION WHAT MAKES HUMANS HUMAN. OCT. 18 2012 9:09 AM Lascaux’s Picassos What prehistoric art tells us about the evolution of the human brain. By Katy Waldman Everyone answers the question “What makes humans human?” in her own way, but if you were ever a liberal arts student, you might have to resist the urge to roll your eyes and reply, “The humanities.” Maybe you’d get more speci!c, quoting the critic Haldane McFall: "That man who is without the arts is little above the beasts of the !eld." OK, so you’d be pretty pretentious, but would you be wrong? Not really. Paleontologists tend to link the development of modern human cognition to the rise of our ability to express ourselves as artists and historians through cave painting, sculptures, and other prehistoric art. Representing the world in symbols may have heralded the beginnings of language. Creating paint from charcoal, iron-rich ochre, crumbled animal bones, and urine meant understanding how materials could combine to form substances with new properties. Storing the paint—perhaps in an abalone shell that would be discovered 100,000 years later in a cavern on the South African coast—required innovation and planning ahead. Since at least the 1970s, the question of when we !rst acquired our humanness has been tangled up in discoveries about when we began making art. Richard Klein at Stanford used carvings such as the 30,000-year-old Lion Man of Hohlenstein Stadel to substantiate his theory that a genetic mutation caused a sudden mental "owering in our ancestors 40,000 years ago. (Homo sapiens have been around for 200,000 years, but apparently they spent much of that time twiddling their opposable thumbs.) Yet in 1991, the excavation of 77,000-year-old beads and engraved shards of red ochre in South Africa upended Klein’s hypothesis. It suggested that symbolic thinking had emerged much earlier than anyone had thought—maybe even at the same time that our modern bodies evolved. The notion of a game-changing genetic mutation fell out of fashion as older and older artifacts were uncovered. By 2012, Curtis Marean, a paleoanthropologist at Arizona State University, was voicing conventional wisdom when he told Smithsonian’s Erin Wayman: “It always made sense that the origins of modern human behavior, the full assembly of modern uniqueness, had to occur at the origin point of the lineage.” It seems likely that our brains have been equipped for abstraction for as long as we have been human. But how does prehistoric art help us understand this capacity—which today asserts itself everywhere from the walls of MoMA to the icons on our smartphones? The images in the Lascaux, Nerja, and Chauvet caverns look far from hyperrealistic. One simple explanation holds that our ancestors didn’t have the time or skill to render horses and cattle exactly as they appeared. Yet researchers in neuroaesthetics are beginning to wonder whether the abstraction in Paleolithic art actual.

1. HUMAN EVOLUTION WHAT MAKES HUMANS HUMAN.
OCT. 18 2012 9:09 AM
Lascaux’s Picassos
What prehistoric art tells us about the evolution of the human
brain.
By Katy Waldman
Everyone answers the question “What makes humans
human?” in her own way, but if you were ever a liberal arts
student, you might have to resist the urge to roll your eyes and
reply, “The humanities.” Maybe you’d get more speci!c, quoting
the critic Haldane McFall: "That man who is without the arts is
little above the beasts of the !eld."
OK, so you’d be pretty pretentious, but would you be wrong?
Not really. Paleontologists tend to link the development of
modern human cognition to the rise of our ability to express
ourselves as artists and historians through cave painting,
sculptures, and other prehistoric art. Representing the world in
symbols may have heralded the beginnings of language.

2. Creating paint from charcoal, iron-rich ochre, crumbled animal
bones, and urine meant understanding how materials could
combine to form substances with new properties. Storing the
paint—perhaps in an abalone shell that would be discovered
100,000 years later in a
cavern on the South African coast—required innovation and
planning ahead.
Since at least the 1970s, the question of when we !rst acquired
our humanness has been tangled up in discoveries about when
we began making art.
Richard Klein at Stanford used carvings such as the 30,000-
year-old Lion Man of Hohlenstein Stadel to substantiate his
theory that a genetic mutation
caused a sudden mental "owering in our ancestors 40,000 years
ago. (Homo sapiens have been around for 200,000 years, but
apparently they spent
much of that time twiddling their opposable thumbs.) Yet in
1991, the excavation of 77,000-year-old beads and engraved
shards of red ochre in South
Africa upended Klein’s hypothesis. It suggested that symbolic
thinking had emerged much earlier than anyone had thought—
maybe even at the same
time that our modern bodies evolved. The notion of a game-
changing genetic mutation fell out of fashion as older and older
artifacts were uncovered.

3. By 2012, Curtis Marean, a paleoanthropologist at Arizona State
University, was voicing conventional wisdom when he told
Smithsonian’s Erin Wayman:
“It always made sense that the origins of modern human
behavior, the full assembly of modern uniqueness, had to occur
at the origin point of the
lineage.”
It seems likely that our brains have been equipped for
abstraction for as long as we have been human. But how does
prehistoric art help us understand
this capacity—which today asserts itself everywhere from the
walls of MoMA to the icons on our smartphones? The images in
the Lascaux, Nerja, and
Chauvet caverns look far from hyperrealistic. One simple
explanation holds that our ancestors didn’t have the time or
skill to render horses and cattle
exactly as they appeared. Yet researchers in neuroaesthetics are
beginning to wonder whether the abstraction in Paleolithic art
actually mirrors the way
our minds process the world.
A leading proponent of this theory is V.S. Ramachandran,
director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at UC-San Diego
and author of The Tell-Tale
Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human.
Ramachandran outlined 10 aesthetic principles that interest or
delight the neurons in our

4. visual cortex. One of them, peak shift, describes the way “we
!nd deliberate distortions of a stimulus even more exciting than
the stimulus itself.” Peak
shift was !rst discovered by the scientist Niko Tinbergen in the
1950s. Noting that seagull chicks tapped at the beaks of their
mothers in order to be fed
regurgitated !sh, Tinbergen sought to isolate what it was about
the beaks that provoked this response. He presented baby
herring gulls with fake beaks
—painted wooden sticks with single red dots at the ends, like
the red dot at the end of an adult gull’s beak. The chicks pecked
eagerly. Next, he showed
http://www.slate.com/slideshows/health_and_science/gorgeous-
cave-paintings-and-sculptures-from-thousands-of-years-
ago.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolut
ion.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolut
ion.html
http://www.slate.com/authors.katy_waldman.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolut
ion.html
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/hominids/2011/10/the-earliest-
known-artists-studio/
http://aurignacien.de/en/a-br-art.php
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/behavior/blombos-ocher-
plaque
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/When-Did-the-
Human-Mind-Evolve-to-What-It-is-Today-160374925.html
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393340627/ref=as_li_ss_tl

5. ?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=03933
40627&linkCode=as2&tag=slatmaga-20
Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings
Company. All contents © 2014 The Slate Group LLC. All rights
reserved.
the chicks the same sticks, except with three red dots instead of
one. The chicks pecked even faster. The experiment revealed
that the baby gulls had an
exaggerated response to stimuli that were also exaggerated.
Tinbergen named this e#ect “peak shift” (because all the peak
pecking happened after the
stimulus was shifted).
Ramachandran’s insight lay in connecting the chicks’ feverish
tapping to the way early humans portrayed the world around
them. If our ancestors were
also hardwired to respond more intensely to magni!ed stimuli,
then it would make sense for that preference to !nd its way into
their art. Sure enough,
cave paintings from Spain to Australia emphasize the most
salient parts of the animals they represent: Bison are blooms of
meat on tiny legs,
rhinoceroses sprout enormous horns, bears are fat but
powerfully jawed. And human forms received the same
essentializing treatment. Take the
Venus of Willendorf, an 11-cm-high carving discovered in
Austria in 1908. Her pendulous breasts, swollen stomach, and

6. prominent genitalia capture
what it meant to be female 25,000 years ago. She has no arms or
facial features, but she doesn’t need them to convey fertility.
An even more ancient
statue, the Venus of Hohle Fels, barely has limbs or a head: Her
message—sex, procreation, and abundance—comes across in
broad hips and a carefully
carved pelvic girdle.
Anthropologists still debate the purpose of these !gurines. Were
they religious talismans, art objects, children’s toys, or even
prehistoric porn? A team of
researchers at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
suggests that voluptuous statues “symbolized the hope for a
well-nourished
community.” Translating this into neuroscienti!c terms,
Ramachandran speculates that our early ancestors were primed
to respond to signs of health
and successful reproduction. They lived toward the end of the
last Ice Age, facing grim winters and a scarce food supply. It’s
not surprising that the sight
of a corpulent or pregnant woman would have caused their
brains to light up with pleasure and attention.
In an article on peak shift in Psychology Today, Jonah Lehrer
describes a study in which subjects could more readily identify
famous !gures like Richard
Nixon by cartoon caricatures than by photographs. The part of

7. the brain recruited for facial recognition, called the fusiform
gyrus, excels at
interpreting the qualities that distinguish one object from
another, to the point where it favors slightly warped
representations of reality. Lehrer linked
the Nixon experiment to the visionary distortions of Picasso,
whose portrait of Gertrude Stein “intensi!es reality” through a
process of careful
abstraction. “Art is the lie that reveals the truth,” Lehrer wrote,
quoting the cubist master.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/28985/Magdalenia
n-era-cave-painting-of-a-bison-Altamira-Spain
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/hominids/2012/05/the-top-
four-candidates-for-europes-oldest-work-of-art/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Fate-of-
the-Cave-Bear.html
http://arthistoryresources.net/willendorf/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-
Cave-Art-Debate.html
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-
Cave-Art-Debate.html
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200907/unlocking-
the-mysteries-the-artistic-mind
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:q49i-
bIeZFIJ:psych.stanford.edu/~bt/memory/papers/CaricaturesMC8
5.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjB9iqWuboZEAx
Rm6JatabE7nVq_bPST4PkG2uTqDeXeZOoYnbWa5SwY2212IF
ryelkirXNpo63lItc1_fAl5hQG8bNTDy0gTUxZN2hRAGomuyAZ
6QOO95wC_-
8QNNXQvOigJBA&sig=AHIEtbSUS7wIyiYRb_CmNryv1aj8Uz
P0Ew
http://www.themasterpiececards.com/famous-paintings-

8. reviewed/bid/23539/Famous-Paintings-Portrait-of-Gertrude-
Stein
The First Two Years:
Psychosocial Development
Charles A. Guigno, M.A.
[email protected]
*
As always, culture and experience influence the norms of
development.This is especially true for emotional development
after the first eight months.
*
Emotional Development: Infant Emotions
Early emotions
High emotional responsiveness
Reactive pain and pleasure to complex social awareness
Smiling and laughing
Social smile (6 weeks): Evoked by viewing human faces
Laughter (3 to 4 months): Often associated with curiosity
(familiarity and surprise)
CHRISTOPHER HERWIG/GETTY IMAGES

9. Smiles All Around
Joy is universal when an infant smiles at her beaming
grandparents—a smile made even better when the tongue joins
in.
Social smile (6 weeks): Evoked by viewing human faces,
normally evident in infants about six weeks after birthLaughter
(3 to 4 months): Often associated with curiosity
*
Infant Emotional Development
Anger
First expressed at around 6 months
Is healthy response to frustration (hate to be strapped in, caged,
closed in or even held when they want to explore)
Sadness
Appears in first months
Indicates withdrawal and is accompanied by increased
production of cortisol (stress hormone)
Anger releases stress and sadness is repressed anger
Infant Emotional DevelopmentFear: Emerges at about 9 months
in response to people, things, or situationsSeparation anxiety:
clinging and crying when a familiar caregiver is about to leave.
tears, dismay, or anger occurNormal at 1, Intensifies by 2, but if
it remains strong after age 3, it may be considered an emotional
disorderStranger wariness: fear of unfamiliar people, especially
when they move too close, too quickly. Infant no longer smiles
at any friendly face but cries or looks frightenedMeans that
infant’s memories are working

10. *
Toddler Emotional Development
Toddlers emotions
Anger and fear become less frequent and more focused (towards
infuriating or terrifying experiences)
Laughing and crying become louder and more discriminating
Temper tantrums may appear (they are without logic, so adults
react accordingly)
Sadness comes after tantrums and then comfort is helpful.
New emotions: require social awareness
Pride
Shame
Embarrassment
Disgust
Guilt
Requires an awareness of other peopleEmerges from family
interactions, influenced by the cultureBy age 2, most toddlers
display entire spectrum of emotions and begin to regulate their
reactions.
*
Emotional Development
Mirror Recognition
Classic experiment (M. Lewis & Brooks, 1978)
Babies aged 9–24 months looked into a mirror after a dot of
rouge had been put on their noses.
None of the babies younger than 12 months old reacted as if

11. they knew the mark was on them.
15- to 24-month-olds showed self-awareness by touching their
own noses with curiosity.
STEPHEN CHIANG/GETTY IMAGES
Glad to Meet You She enjoys meeting another baby, even if that
baby is herself in the mirror. Later, at about 18 months, she will
realize that the mirror image is herself.
A t 18 months, he is at the beginning of self-awareness, testing
to see whether his mirror image will meet his finger
*
Emotional Development
Self-awareness
Person's realization that he or she is a distinct individual whose
body, mind, and actions are separate from those of other people.
First 4 months
Infants have no sense of self and may see themselves as part of
their mothers.
5 months
Infants begin to develop an awareness of themselves as separate
from their mothers.
15-18 months
Emergence of the me-self
Using first-person pronouns (I, me, mine, myself, my)
Hush Now

12. Babies cry and parents soothe them the world over, while
contexts shape both crying and soothing. The little girl (left)
will probably quiet soon, as she is held snuggly next to her
father’s body. The boy (right) is less likely to settle down, as he
is surrounded by strangers in a Ukrainian contest to see which
baby can crawl fastest.
Emotional Development: Temperament
Temperament
Inborn (nature not nurture) differences between one person and
another in emotions, activity, and self-regulation
New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) Thomas & Chess
Started in the 1960s
By 3 months they found four categories of temperament
1) Easy 2) Difficult 3) slow-to-warm up 4) hard to classify
CategoriesEasy (40%)Difficult (10%)Slow to warm up
(15%)Hard to classify (35%)
*
Emotional Development: Temperament
NYLS overall conclusions: Apparent dimensions
1) Effortful control (able to regulate attention and emotion,
self-soothe)
2) Negative mood (fearful, angry, unhappy)
3) Exuberant (active, social, not shy)
Each of these dimensions is associated with distinctive brain
patterns as well as behavior, and each affects later personality.
Emotional Development: Temperament

13. Longitudinal study of infant temperament (Fox et al., 2001)
Grouped 4-month-olds into three distinct types based on
responses to fearful stimulationPositive
(exuberant)NegativeInhibited (fearful)Less than half altered
their responses as they grew olderFearful infants were most
likely to changeExuberant infants were least likely to
changeMaturation and child rearing has effect on inborn
temperament
Development of Social Bonds
Attachment
Involves lasting emotional bond that one person has with
another
Begins to form in early infancy and influence a person's close
relationships throughout life
Overtakes synchrony
Demonstrated through proximity-seeking and contact-
maintaining
Signs of AttachmentInfants show their attachment in several
ways
Proximity-seeking: Approaching and following their caregivers
Contact-maintaining: Touching, snuggling, and
holdingAttachment
Universal part of inborn social nature of the human species
Specific manifestations vary depending on the culture and age
of the people who are attached to each other
Proximity-seeking is evident when a baby cries if the mother
closes the door when she goes to the bathroom or if a back-
facing car seat prevents the baby from seeing the parent.

14. *
Development of Social Bonds: Measuring Attachment
Strange SituationLaboratory procedure for measuring
attachment by evoking infants' reactions to the stress of various
adults' comings and goings in an unfamiliar playroom
Key observed behaviorsExploration of the toys. A secure
toddler plays happily.Reaction to the caregiver's departure. A
secure toddler misses the caregiver.Reaction to the caregiver's
return. A secure toddler welcomes the caregiver's reappearance.
Development of Social Bonds: Attachment Types
Secure attachmentRelationship (type B) in which infant obtains
both comfort and confidence from the presence of his or her
caregiver
Insecure-avoidant attachmentPattern of attachment (type A) in
which infant avoids connection with the caregiver, as when the
infant seems not to care about the caregiver's presence,
departure, or return
Development of Social Bonds: Attachment Types
Insecure-resistant/ambivalent attachment

15. Pattern of attachment (type C) in which anxiety and uncertainty
are evident, as when an infant becomes very upset at separation
from the caregiver and both resists and seeks contact on reunion
Disorganized attachment
Type of attachment (type D) that is marked by an infant's
inconsistent reactions to the caregiver's departure and return
Theories of Infant Psychosocial Development
Psychoanalytic TheoryFREUD: Oral and anal stages
Oral stage (first year)
Anal stage (second year)
Potential conflicts
Oral fixation
Anal personality (disputed by current developmentalists)
FREUD: Oral and anal stagesOral stage (first year): The mouth
is the young infant's primary source of gratificationAnal stage
(second year): Infant's main pleasure comes from the anus (e.g.
sensual pleasure of bowel movements and the psychological
pleasure of controlling them)Potential conflicts:Oral fixation: If
a mother frustrates her infant's urge to suck, the child may
become an adult who is stuck (fixated) at the oral stage (e.g.
eats, drinks, chews, bites, or talks excessively)Anal personality:
Overly strict or premature toilet training may result in an adult
with an unusually strong need for control, regularity and
cleanliness
*

16. Theories of Infant Psychosocial Development
Psychosocial TheoryERIKSON: Trust and autonomy stagesTrust
versus mistrust
Infants learn basic trust if the world is a secure place where
their basic needs are met
Autonomy versus shame and doubt
Toddlers either succeed or fail in gaining a sense of self-rule
over their actions and their bodies
Early problemsAn adult who is suspicious and pessimistic
(mistrusting) or who is easily shamed (insufficient autonomy)
can be created
*
Theories of Infant Psychosocial Development
BehaviorismBANDURA: Social learning theoryParents mold an
infant's emotions and personality through reinforcement and
punishmentBehavior patterns acquired by observing the
behavior of othersDemonstrated in the classic Bobo Doll study
Hammering Bobo These images are stills from the film of
Bandura’s original study of social learning, in which frustrated
4-year-olds imitated the behavior they had observed an adult
perform. The children used the same weapon as the adult, with
the same intent—whether that involved hitting the doll with a
hammer, shooting it
*

17. The First Two Years:
Cognitive Development
Charles A. Guigno, M.A.
[email protected]
*
Sensorimotor IntelligenceSensorimotor intelligencePiaget’s
term for the way infants think—by using their senses and motor
skills—during the first period of cognitive
developmentPiagetInfants are active learners.Adaptation is the
core of intelligence.Cognition develops in four distinct periods
See Table 6.1 for additional details related to the stages of
sensorimotor intelligence.
*
Circular reactions keep going because each action produces
pleasure that encourages more action.
*

18. Sensorimotor IntelligenceStages one and two: Primary circular
reactions; infant’s responses to his or her own bodyCircular
reactions: Interaction of sensation, perception, and
cognitionPrimary circular reactions: Two stages of sensorimotor
intelligence involving the infant’s own bodyStage one (birth to
1 month): Stage of reflexes (sucking, grasping, staring and
listening)Stage two (1 to 4 months): First acquired adaptations
or habits (sucking thumbs or pacifiers only)
In every aspect of sensorimotor intelligence, the brain and the
senses interact with experiences, each shaping the other as part
of a dynamic system
*
Sensorimotor Intelligence
Infants adapt reflexes through information from repeated
responses.
Time for Adaptation
Sucking is a reflex at first, but adaptation begins soon. She is
about to make that adaptation and suck just her thumb from now
on.
Sucking is a reflex at first, but adaptation begins as soon as an
infant differentiates a pacifier from her mother’s breast or
realizes that her hand has grown too big to fit into her mouth.
This infant’s expression of concentration suggests that she is
about to make that adaptation and suck just her thumb from now
on.
*

19. Sensorimotor IntelligenceStages three and four: Secondary
circular reactions; infant’s response to objects and
peopleSecondary circular reactions: Interaction between baby
and something else; mirror neurons begin to functionStage three
(4-8 months): Attempts to make interesting things last (know
how to continue an experience)Ex: clapping hands when mom
says patty-cakeStage four (6-12 months): New adaptation and
anticipation; means to the end (initiate and anticipate)Ex:
putting mom’s hands together in order to make her start playing
patty-cake.
Secondary circular reactionsThe second of three types of
feedback loops in sensorimotor intelligence, this one involving
people and objects.Infants respond to other people, to toys, and
to any other object they can touch or move.
*
Sensorimotor IntelligenceStages five and six: Tertiary circular
reactions; act first (5) and think later (6).Tertiary circular
reactions: Involves active exploration and experimentation;
exploration of range of new activities and variations in
responses as way of learningStage five (12-18 months): New
means through active exploration (“little scientist”)Stage six
(18-24 months): Mental combinations; intellectual
experimentation via imaginationThings that are truly dangerous
need to be locked and gated. Toddlers can pretend, think of
consequences
Circular reactions
*
Stage FiveStage Six

20. “Little scientist”
The stage-five toddler (age 12 to 18 months) who experiments
without
anticipating the results, using trial and
error in active and creative exploration.
No More Playpens
“Little scientists” still “experiment in order to see,” but this 14-
month-old uses a digital tablet and might protest if it is taken
away
Exploration at 15 Months One of the best ways to investigate
food is to squish it in your hands, observing any changes in
color and texture and listening for any sounds. Taste and smell
are primary senses for adults when eating, but it looks as if
Jonathan has already had his fill of those.
*
Sensorimotor IntelligenceGoal-direct behaviorPurposeful action
that benefit from new motor skills resulting from brain
maturationObject permanenceRealization that objects or people
continue to exist when they are no longer in sight
Peek-a-boo makes all three happy, each for cognitive reasons.
The 9-month-old is discovering object permanence, his sister (at
the concrete operational stage) enjoys making brother laugh,
and their mother understands more abstract ideas— such as

21. family bonding
The baby’s obvious goal seeking stems from (1) an enhanced
awareness of cause and effect, (2) memory for actions already
completed, and (3) understanding of other people’s
intentionsPiaget’s results:Infants younger than 8 months do not
search for the object (by removing the cloth).At about 8 months,
infants search immediately (removing the cloth) after the object
is covered but not if they have to wait a few seconds.By 2 years,
children fully understand object permanence, progressing
through several stages of ever-advanced cognition (Piaget,
1954).Object permanence accepted by some scientists and
questioned by others
*
Mission Impossible: Babies
Escapehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDaRLZF9HqY
Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?Listening and
respondingBefore birth: Language learning via brain
organization and hearing; may be innateNewborn: Preference
for speech sounds and mother’s language; gradual selective
listeningFamiliar with the rhythm, sounds and cadenceAround 6
months: Ability to distinguish sounds and gestures in own
languageInfants’ ability to distinguish sounds in the language
they hear improves, the ability to hear sounds in other
languages deteriorates. If parents want a child to speak two
languages, they must speak both of them to their infant.
Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?Child-

22. Directed SpeechIn every language adults use higher pitch,
simple words, repetition, varied speed and exaggerated
emotional tone when talking to infantsbaby talk, motherese or
child-directed speechFosters learning and children prefer it
!They also like: Alliteration, Rhymes, Repetition, Rhythm and
varied speech.Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Dr. Seuss’ Words of Wisdom
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your
own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one
who'll decide where to go...” ― Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places
You’ll Go !
“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one
alive who is Youer than You.” ― Dr. Seuss, Happy Birthday to
You !
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The
more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” ―Dr. Seuss, I
Can Read with My Eyes Shut !
Language DevelopmentBabblingInvolves repetition of certain
syllables, such as ba-ba-ba, that begins when babies are between
6 and 9 months oldIs experience-expectantBegins to sound like
native language around 12 months (accents, cadence,
consonants)
Who Is Babbling?
Probably both the 6-month-old and the 27-year-old. During
every day of infancy, mothers and babies communicate with
noises, movements (notice the hands), and expressions.

23. LanguageGesturingAll infants gesture.Concepts with gesture are
expressed sooner than speech.Pointing emerges in human babies
around 10 months.Understanding another person’s perspective.
Show Me Where
Pointing is one of the earliest forms of communication,
emerging at about 10 months. As you see here, pointing is
useful lifelong for humans.
Language LearningFirst words: Gradual beginningsAt about 1
year: Speak a few words 6-15 months: Understand 10 times
more words than produced. (comprehension before
production)12 months: Begin to use holophrases (single words
that express a complete thought); recognize vocalization from
universal to language-specificNaming explosion: many of the
words are nouns (person, place, things)Once spoken, vocabulary
reaches about 50 words, it builds quickly, at a rate of 50 to 100
words per month.21-month-olds say twice as many words as 18-
month-olds
See Appendix A
*
Language Learning: GrammarMastering two languagesQuantity
of speech in both languages the child hears is crucialChildren
implicitly track the number of words and phrases and learn
those expressed most often.Bilingual toddlers realize
differences between languages, adjusting tone, pronunciation,
cadence, and vocabulary when speaking to a monolingual
person.

24. Worldwide, people who are not yet 2 years old already use
language well.
*
Theories of Language LearningTheory One: Infants need to be
taught.B. F. Skinner (1957) noticed that spontaneous babbling is
usually reinforced.Parents are expert teachers, and other
caregivers help them teach children to speak.Frequent repetition
of words is instructive, especially when the words are linked to
the pleasures of daily life.Well-taught infants become well-
spoken children.If adults want children who speak, understand,
and (later) read well, they must talk to their infants.
Theories of Language LearningTheory Two: Social impulses
fosters infant language.Infants communicate because humans
have evolved as social beings.The emotional messages of
speech, not the words, are the focus of early
communication.Each culture has practices that further social
interaction, including talking.The social content of speech is
universal, which is why babies learn whatever specifics their
culture provides.
Learning the first 50 words is a milestone in early language
acquisition, as it predicts the arrival of the naming explosion

25. and the multiword sentence a few weeks later. Researchers
found that the 9-month-old infants of highly responsive mothers
(top 10 percent) reached this milestone as early as 15 months.
The infants of nonresponsive mothers (bottom 10 percent)
lagged significantly behind.
*
Theories of Language LearningTheory Three: Infants teach
themselves.Language learning is innate; adults need not teach
it, nor is it a by-product of social interaction.Language itself is
experience-expectant, although obviously the specific language
is experience-dependent.
Language acquisition device (LAD): Term for a hypothesized
mental structure that enables aspects of grammar, vocabulary,
and intonation
*
Theories of Language LearningTheory Three: Infants teach
themselves.
Chomsky
Language too complex to be mastered through step-by-step
conditioning.
Language acquisition device (LAD) is innate.
Allows us to learn language including grammar, vocabulary and
intonation
All babies are eager learners, and language may be considered
one more aspect of neurological maturation.
Language acquisition device (LAD): Term for a hypothesized
mental structure that enables aspects of grammar, vocabulary,
and intonation

26. *
Which Perspective Is Correct?All perspective offer insight into
language acquisition.
Hybrid theory
Some aspects of language learning may be best explained by
one theory at one age and other aspects by another theory at
another age.
Multiple attentional, social and linguistic cues contribute to
early language.
Different elements of the language apparatus may have evolved
in different ways.
The First Two Years:
Biosocial Development
Charles A. Guigno, M.A.
[email protected]
*
Brain GrowthHead-sparingBiological mechanismBrain is the
last part of the body to be damaged by malnutrition. Protects the

27. brain when malnutrition disrupts body growth.Neurons
ConnectingCommunication within the central nervous system,
brain and spinal cord, begins with nerve cells called neurons.
The newborn brain has billions of neurons, 70% of them in the
cortex. Most thinking, feeling and sensing occur in the cortex.
*
Brain Development
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
The Developing Cortex
Brain Development: Dendrites Sprouting
Experience and Pruning
At birth the brain contains at least 100 billion neurons, more
than a person needs.
40,000 new synapses are formed every second in the infant’s
brain. Brain structure and growth depends on genes and

28. maturation, but even more on experience. Transient exuberance:
the great but temporary increase in the number of dendrites that
develop in an infant’s brain during the first two years of life.
Expansion and pruning of dendrites occur for every aspect of
early experience.Unused dendrites whither to allow space
between neurons, allowing more synapses and thus more
complex thinking.
*
Experience and Pruning (Ct’d)
Brain sculpting is attuned to experience: the appropriate links in
the brain need to be established, protected and strengthened
while inappropriate ones are eliminated.
Some research suggests that infants who are often hungry, hurt
or neglected may develop brains that compensate and cannot be
reprogrammed even if circumstances change.
The hungry baby becomes the obese adult
The abused child rejects attention
*
Harm and ProtectionInfants need stimulationExperience-
dependent: brain development is variable because circumstances
vary.Experience-expectant: brain development occurs because

29. of circumstances that all human babies should have. Sensory
stimulation: play, sights, sounds, touches and movements all
help with brain connections. Infants are fascinated by simple
objects and facial expressions.
*
Harm and Protection (Ct’d)Infants need protectionShaken baby
syndrome: a life-threatening injury that occurs when an infant is
forcefully shaken back and forth, this motion ruptures blood
vessels in the brain and breaks neural connections. Stress and
the brainOverabundance of stress hormones damages later brain
functioning. Self-righting: an inborn drive to remedy a
developmental deficitInfants with no toys develop their brains
using other objects available. Human brains are designed to
grow and adapt.
*
SleepSleep specifics vary because of biology and the social
environment.Newborns sleep about 15-17 hours a day, in one to
three-hour segments.Newborns’ sleep is primarily active
sleep.Newborns have a high proportion of REM (rapid eye
movement) sleep.Closed lids, flickering eyes and rapid brain
waves.Indicates dreaming.
*

30. Sleep ProblemsFirst born infants typically receive more
attention and this may contribute to sleep problems. One fourth
of parents of children under age three reported sleep problems.
Parent reactions to infant sleep shape the baby’s sleep patterns,
which in turn affect the parents.
*
Perceiving and MovingSensation precedes perception.
Perception leads to cognition. Sensation: Response of a sensory
system (eyes, ears, skin, tongue and nose) when it detects a
stimulus. Every sense functions at birth. Young babies use their
senses to attend to everything without judgment. Survival
requires babies to respond to people. Perception: mental
processing of sensory information when the brain interprets a
sensation.If a sensation occurs often, it connects with past
experience, making a particular sight worth interpreting
*
Hearing and SeeingHearingDevelops during the last trimester of
pregnancyMost advanced of the newborn’s sensesSpeech
perception by 4 months after birth.SeeingLeast mature sense at
birthNewborns focus between 4-30 inches awayExperience and

31. maturation of the visual cortex improve shape recognition,
visual scanning and details.Binocular vision at 3 months.
*
Tasting and SmellingFunction at birth and rapidly adapt to the
social world. Related to family and cultural preferences.May
have evolutionary function.As babies learn to recognize each
person’s scent, they prefer to sleep next to their caregivers.
*
Touch and Pain
TouchSense of touch is acute in infants.Wrapping, rubbing,
massaging and cradling are soothing to many new babies.
PainPain and temperature are often connected to touch.Some
people assume that even the fetus can feel pain.Others say that
the sense of pain does not mature until months or years later.
*

32. Motor Skills: Gross Motor SkillsMotor skill: the learned
abilities to move some part of the body, in actions ranging from
a large leap to a flicker of the eyelid. Course of
developmentCephalocaudal (head-down) and proximodistal
(center-out) direction. Gross motor skillsPhysical abilities
involving large body movements (walking and jumping)
*
Dynamic Systems: Motor SkillsMuscle Strength: As they gain
strength they can stand and then walk. Brain Maturation: As the
brain matures, deliberate leg action becomes possible.Practice:
Unbalanced, wide-legged, short strides become a steady, smooth
gait. Powerfully affected by caregiving before the first
independent step.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acWAnzJTGJE
*
Motor Skills: Fine Motor SkillsFine motor skills: physical
abilities involving small body movements, especially of the
hands and fingers. (mouth movements too)Shaped by culture
and opportunityBy 6 months: most babies can reach, grab and
grasp almost any object of the right size.Towards the end of the

33. first year and throughout the second year: babies master the
pincer movement and self-feeding.
*
Surviving in Good HealthAt least 9 billion children were born
between 1950 and 2010; more than 1 billion of them died before
age 5.The world death rate in the first five years of life has
dropped about 2 percent per year since 1990. Public health
measures (clean water, nourishing food, immunization, medical
treatments)
*
Sudden Infant Death SyndromeSudden infant death syndrome
(SIDS)
Situation in which a seemingly healthy infant, usually between
2 and 6 months old, suddenly stops breathing and dies
unexpectedly while asleep.
Beal: Studied SIDS death in South Australia and concluded
factors related to increased risk
Low birth weight
Sleeping position (Back is best!)
Maternal smoking
Bedding type

34. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41697631 .
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the
Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars,
researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information
technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new
forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please
contact [email protected]
.
Society for Science & the Public is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to Science
News.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 198.28.62.101 on Fri, 12 Sep
2014 17:54:59 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=scise
rv
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41697631?origin=JSTOR-pdf
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
This content downloaded from 198.28.62.101 on Fri, 12 Sep
2014 17:54:59 PM

35. All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspArticle
Contentsp. 12Issue Table of ContentsScience News, Vol. 181,
No. 13 (JUNE 30, 2012), pp. 1-32Front MatterFROM THE
EDITOR: Turing's idea still inspires advances in computing [pp.
2-2]SCIENCE NOTEBOOK [pp. 4-4]In the NewsSTORY
ONETreatment helps paralyzed rats walk, run, climb [pp. 5-
6]EarthSupervolcanoes evolve superfast [pp. 7-7]Linking
magma to quakes [pp. 7-7]Body &BrainDrinking coffee gives
jolt to life span [pp. 8-8]Youngsters can sniff out elderly [pp. 8-
8]Severe apnea tied to cancer [pp. 9-9]Long-acting
contraceptives best [pp. 9-9]Matter &EnergyQuantum
teleportation takes leap [pp. 10-10]Meet flerovium and
livermorium [pp. 10-10]Atom &CosmosSecond planet takes
spotlight [pp. 11-11]HumansStone Age artists produced movies
[pp. 12-12]Thou just can't help but covet [pp. 12-12]LifeBad
timing for hummingbirds [pp. 13-13]Trickle-down ecology [pp.
13-13]Genes &CellsDNA stores data in rewritable form [pp. 14-
14]10 genes for poppy potion [pp. 14-14]TechnologyBacterial
trick keeps robots dancing in sync [pp. 15-15]FeaturesAnimals
on the move: A warming climate means shifting ranges and
mixed-up relationships for a lot of species [pp. 16-21]HURT
BLOCKER: The next big pain drug may soothe sensory
firestorms without side effects [pp. 22-25]EssayA MIND FROM
MATH [pp. 26-28]BOOKSHELF [pp. 30-30]FEEDBACK [pp.
31-31]Correction [pp. 31-31]PEOPLE [pp. 32-32]Back Matter