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Interesting...
| 3 repliesI just read a short review article on "Noble Intent," the science journal for ARS Technica. The study was originally published in Nature, which (along with Science), is one of the most highly respected journals in the scientific community.
Scientists at Yale determined that babies as young as six months old can differentiate between a character that is helpful from one that hinders the progress of a third character. The babies were shown a video in which a climber made several failed attempts to reach the top of a hill before he was helped or hindered by another character. After given some time to process what they had seen, the children’s attitudes towards the characters were measured by which character they reached for (the helpful character or the one that hindered the progress of the climber). All of the six month old children and 14/16 ten-month old children preferred the helpful character.
This kind of study is amazing to me, because children are so much more perceptive than I ever realized. I’m always in awe of how much information they seem to retain and rationally process.