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A groundbreaking study conducted by the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and Central European University (CEU) in Austria has revealed that creativity starts as early as infancy. The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that infants under one year old can combine simple concepts into complex ideas, highlighting that creative thinking begins in babyhood and plays a crucial role in language acquisition.
The study aimed to explore the origins of human creativity and productive thinking, focusing on how individuals generate entirely new thoughts and ideas. The researchers discovered that the basic mechanism for creativity involves taking familiar concepts and combining them into new structures. Despite its significance, little was known about how early in life these abilities emerge.
The researchers worked with a cohort of 60 babies, all around 12 months old. They introduced the infants to two novel words describing quantity: “mize,” meaning “one,” and “padu,” meaning “two.” The babies were then asked to combine these new number words with different object names, such as identifying “padu ducks” from among a choice of images. This approach allowed the researchers to test the infants’ ability to combine concepts in real time, rather than simply recall combinations of words they already knew.
By using eye-tracking technology to monitor where the babies looked, the researchers demonstrated that the infants could successfully combine the two concepts to understand what they were being asked about. This ability to quickly learn new words and integrate them with familiar words to form meaningful phrases is a significant cognitive achievement.
Dr. Barbara Pomiechowska, the lead researcher who conducted the study while a postdoctoral fellow at CEU and is now an assistant professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham, commented on the findings. “Human creativity has no boundaries: It has taken us to the moon and allowed us to cure deadly diseases—but despite its importance, we don’t yet know when and how this impressive ability to combine ideas and invent new things emerges. This research shows that we must go right back to the beginning of language acquisition to solve this puzzle,” she said.
Dr. Agnes Kovacs, from CEU’s Department of Cognitive Science and CEU’s Cognitive Development Center, emphasized the broader implications of the study. “For babies, this ability to combine different concepts is likely to help not only to interpret the complex language input, but also to learn about different aspects of the physical and social world. For adults, it’s an ability that helps to move past everything that’s already been thought of, opening the mind towards endless possibilities,” she explained.
The study sheds light on the early cognitive abilities of infants, suggesting that the roots of human creativity are present long before the onset of speech. This research has significant implications for understanding the developmental processes underlying language acquisition and creative thinking.
For more information, refer to the study by Barbara Pomiechowska et al., “Early-emerging combinatorial thought: Human infants flexibly combine kind and quantity concepts,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2315149121.
