Mind in the Making by Ellen Galinsky

Author:Ellen Galinsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

LEARNING FROM OTHERS—YOUNG CHILDREN TEND TO TRUST OTHERS WHO ARE HELPFUL

Because we get so much of our information from other people, it’s important to look at how our trust in others as information providers develops. It begins with a people sense. Infants appear to be wired to understand people in very specific ways far earlier than they could have been taught these perceptions. Amanda Woodward of the University of Maryland has conducted studies revealing that from infancy on, children pay attention to people’s intentions and goals. They don’t see people’s actions and speech as random or arbitrary—they focus on what the people in their lives seem to want to convey.

But they pay attention to more than just intentions, as can be seen in a study conducted by Kiley Hamlin, Karen Wynn, and Paul Bloom of Yale University. One at a time, ten-month-old babies were brought into a darkened room, where they sat on their parents’ laps and watched a show that took place on a steep hill made of foam core on a puppet stage. Hamlin describes the scene:

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