Learning to Respond: Early Childhood Cognitive Development

Brain research supports the notion that babies are much smarter than we think. This has been met with much excitement, particularly in education circles.

But amid all this new information about babies’ cognitive development has come a parallel insight: Babies’ emotional development and cognitive development are tied closely together. Avid consumers of every new experience, babies process what they learn in ways that change their cognition but also impact the way they feel about themselves and others. 

The current priority in the fields of neuroscience and child psychology is seeking to better understand how cognitive learning and social-emotional learning fit together. It used to be that those two things were studied separately. Now we know that they go hand in hand with babies. 

Babies seem to have a very strong connection with the feelings of other people early on. They use this ability to read the emotions of others to absorb their culture. For example, Japanese babies seem to be more anxious than babies from other cultures, having learned this attribute from their environments. 

Other studies have shown that many African children learn early motor skills from the pleasure they see their parents have in more physical play with them. The positive interactions between parents and children create an environment that promotes the acquisition of these skills. 

The emotions surrounding each experience influence what a child can learn. Secure, loving interactions promoted greater cognitive processing. Fear and stress inhibit a child’s ability to learn. 

As babies read the emotions of other people, they develop some of their earliest problem-solving skills. In one fascinating study, researchers dropped a pen across the room from a series of older babies. In every single case, the babies watched the pen fall to the floor and then toddled or crawled across the room to pick up the pen for the adult.

When busy parents are frowning over the power bill or muttering about the slow driver in the passing lane, their children are learning lessons about responses. When parents listen intently to a neighbor who is struggling through a hard time, their children learn how to respond with compassion to the suffering of others. 

No person could have positive responses to every situation. It’s neither possible nor even advisable. But parents have to take seriously the fact that they are likely to see their responses to their children replayed in a new generation. And sometimes, hearing our own words out of the mouths of babies can be a chilling wake-up call.