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New research from Cornell University underscores the crucial role of timely responses in helping babies learn language and social norms, with surprising insights drawn from infants’ interactions with a robot. The study highlights how the timing of others’ reactions to a baby’s babbling can significantly influence their early developmental processes.
The research, led by psychology professor Michael Goldstein, deployed a remote-controlled car that engaged with babies by producing speech-like sounds in response to their babbling. Within just 10 minutes, the infants formed strong expectations that the car would respond to their vocalizations. When the car stopped responding, the babies reacted with an intense burst of babbling and play directed at the machine—exhibiting a stronger reaction than when they were communicating with a human.
The study’s findings reveal that during early development, a baby’s foundational learning about where to direct attention is heavily dependent on “contingency”—the timely responses of caregivers or others to the baby’s behavior. Goldstein and his team suggest that in the first year of life, babies are highly “plastic,” meaning they are flexible in what they can learn from contingent interactions, even with machines that lack human features.
This research challenges previous assumptions held by some developmental psychologists, who believed that babies rely on built-in, genetically based knowledge, such as face recognition, to learn. “We’re showing the opposite,” said Goldstein, who directs Cornell’s Behavioral Analysis of Beginning Years (B.A.B.Y.) Laboratory. “What’s built into the baby is to pay attention to timing, and the world takes care of the rest. Babies are learning machines, and it’s on the adults to be responsive in the right ways to drive that learning.”
Published in the journal Infancy, the study involved more than 60 babies, aged 7 and 8 months, placed in a large playroom with either a remote-controlled car or an unfamiliar person. For some infants, the car or person responded to their babbling in a contingent manner, similar to how a caregiver would. The car would roll forward and emit a vowel sound from an attached speaker, while the unfamiliar person would make a similar sound, touch the baby’s shoulder, and smile. In other groups, the car or person responded on a random schedule not triggered by the baby’s vocalizations, a setup known as a yoked control.
After 10 minutes of social interaction, the car or person stopped responding for two minutes. This pause prompted all the babies to become more vocal, but the most dramatic response came from those who had been interacting with the contingent car. “When that contingent car stopped responding, the babies grabbed the car, moved the car, they babbled like crazy at it,” Goldstein explained.
The researchers believe that the plasticity exhibited by the babies, which begins around five months of age, is advantageous while they are learning how to learn. However, this plasticity may diminish as they gain language proficiency.
The findings also offer potential insights into foundational learning mechanisms, which Goldstein’s lab is now beginning to study in babies at risk for autism. These infants might prefer more predictable response rates compared to typically developing babies, offering a new avenue for understanding early development in this population.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, underscoring its significance in the field of developmental psychology. As the study suggests, paying close attention to the timing of responses to babies’ vocalizations may be key to fostering their early learning and social development.
