Hearing

Babies are born with fluid in their middle ear (behind the eardrum), so their hearing is not as sensitive as it will be in about 2 weeks when this fluid is absorbed. Nevertheless, they can tell the difference between loud and soft sounds and between short and long sound duration. The auditory feedback loop is already present and used by your newborn baby. The auditory feedback loop is the relationship between the ability of a baby to use sounds that she hears in order to control or monitor sounds that she produces. Experiments testing the auditory feedback loop examine a baby’s change in heart rate or breathing rate in response to presentation of the same or a different sound. Amazingly, within the first few days after birth, babies can tell the difference between sounds. Distinguishing specific sounds in words, however, comes later. But newborns are able to perceive a great deal right from birth.

Really?

Really? I'll say it again really? People thought that Baby Einstein was going to make their babies smart? Okay, if it didn't work you can go get a refund.

I'm so glad I never was given a set of those things, I know many people who did. My worry was that I couldn't then in good consciousness go and give the things to the Good Will or somthing, it would be perpetuating the notion that sticking babies in front of the television would make them smarter. And, yes it IS television.

But, it's educational!! No, it isn't. What made people go for this drivel in the first place? Well, it turns out that very young children can learn to distinguish different sounds. They can even distinguish sounds in languages that are not in their native language. But, over time, they lose the ability to make the distinctions in the language that they don't hear everyday.

We also know that babies who are exposed to lots of language on average learn more words. But, videos and television-- while they may use language, words, and concepts that babies can learn are not INTERACTIVE. Duh! Here's more on that issue.

Now, I'm not saying that sometimes it isn't convenient to park your baby in front of something like this so that you can take a shower. I'm just saying that you can't count on videos to teach your baby language. Language has give and take, it's responsive-- those are things that only other people in your baby's life can do.

Vision

During the first week of life, your baby can focus on your face, making it the first image in his visual memory. He will gaze at your face and look into your eyes. Eye contact is an important form of communication that will aid your baby’s growth and development. It is one of the first ways he can reliably make contact with you, and it provides a way for you and your baby to begin making emotional contact, known as bonding. Because of sensitivity to bright lights in the first few days after birth, your baby will most likely close his eyes during the day, even when awake. He or she will prefer dim lighting because the pigmentation, or color, of his iris, the part of the eye that regulates the amount of light that enters, is not fully developed. Your baby will blink at bright lights, such as camera flashes, but may also gaze momentarily at certain bright lights or bright objects.

Commentary - We can all play a part in strengthening families

Commentary - We can all play a part in strengthening families

Brain Development

Development of cognition (knowledge about the world), language, and motor skills is highly correlated with brain development. We know that brain development begins during pregnancy. During the 16th week of gestation, cells in your baby’s brain began dividing. Growth occurs very rapidly in the brain stem, which controls basic functions, such as breathing, and in the primary motor (movement) and somatic sensory (hearing, vision, etc.) areas. At birth, your baby’s brain weights about 335 grams—about 25% of your adult brain weight of 1320 grams. After birth and during the first year, the brain grows fast, to about 70% of its adult size by 12 months. Development during this period is important, and is evident in the various areas that we will be covering.

Talking To Babies Helps With Cognitive Development | AHN

Talking To Babies Helps With Cognitive Development AHN

Talking to Children

I read this article today on a new book, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children. The emphasis is on what it is parents can do to nurture and support learning. It's worth a read.

My work with older (preschool children) on mediated learning shows that it's not only about exposing children to language that helps them learn it, it's helping them understand what to pay attention to and to learn to regulate their own attention-- essentially learning how to learn.

In some ways, this isn't all that different from mediated learning, but it seems to do a nice job in providing information based on the vast amount of scientific literature that is available.

How should parents help children learn to learn. One aspect is attention. Many homes around the world are information rich. There's a lot of information-- visual, auditory, sensory-- that babies and young children (and we as adults) need to learn to organize and grapple with. So, an important skill becomes learning how to attend to one thing at a time within the information stream. Parents are instrumental in helping children to pay attention to what's important (and to ignore what's not important). One way parents can do this is through repetition (and variation). Babies seem to like routine-- they find comfort in it. At the same time the novel is fun. By keeping the same basic routine, but varying one thing (or two) at a time, babies can learn to pay attention and look for the novel.

That's it for now. More on this and other topics later.