Science: What babies know about numbers?

Image via Wikipedia

New experimental research reveals a fascinating new world of baby cognition, one in which babies can

• recognize the approximate difference between two numbers
• keep precise track of small numbers, and
• do simple subtraction and addition problems.

Moreover, when babies perform these feats they activate the same parts of the brain that are associated with mathematical thinking in adults.

What babies know about numerosity

Psychologists define “numerosity” as the number of things in a set.

Although we can get a precise measure of numerosity by counting, it’s possible to appreciate numerosity in a more approximate way.

For instance, if I ask you to glance in a crowded elevator and estimate how many people are there, you can probably make a pretty good guess.

Glance inside two elevators, and you’ll also be pretty good at guessing which one has more people in it.

All without counting.

It turns out that adult humans aren’t the only creatures who can pull this off. A variety of non-verbal creatures—including monkeys, rats, and human infants—can detect the approximate difference in magnitude between two sets (Dehaene 1999).

Show them two displays—one featuring 8 items and the other only 4 items—and they will respond differently depending on what they see.

And the difference is observable in the brain.

When 3-month old infants were shown a series of displays depicting different quantities of objects, the electrical activity of their brains changed in response (Izard et al 2008).

For example, babies were presented with a continuous stream of images, each depicting 4 objects. From image to image, the objects were arranged differently. But the total number of objects remained the same.

Infants subjected to this program showed signs of boredom.

But their brain activity (as measured by event-related potentials, or ERPs) would perk up if they were next presented with an image showing 8 objects.

What’s more, the part of the brain that was activated was the same region that lights up when adults process information about numbers (Izard et al 2008).

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Baby Timmy having fun at swimming pool

Learn to be independent

Lately, Timmy always wants to learn to feed himself. I let him "play" his food. Look at him, how messy it was!

There are still many trial and errors to go. Timmy, we hope that you will know the technique to feed yourself soon :-)

What an interesting day for Timmy!

Image by wiccked via Flickr

Today we went to make the passports for me (Lupin) and Timmy. Like you can imagine from a government office, the process of getting things done there can take time. Especially when some things are missing as we didn't know that they want instead of the Identity card his birth certificate (which meant we had to drive home again to collect it) as a proof of his existence. After we left the first time at 8:30 am we took a quick break at home around 10:30 am and left again short after 11 am. Usually the sleeping time for Timmy.

Luckily i wore the comfortable baby sling, otherwise Timmy would be already very fussy. Back in the government office we still had to wait until 12:30 pm (we took the number already at 10 am) to submit the two forms for the passport. Luckily they split the submission for passports in two groups - one group is for any adult and our group was for parents with kids and retired persons (age older than 55 or 60).

This was a very good experience for Timmy as he has seldom contact with other babies/kids in his age. As soon as he saw other kids running around or being on the arms of their parents, he looked at them. Observed them at first what they are doing and what their reactions are and was in the mood to socialize with them. His first step is now usually that he waved his hands (which probably means hi or goodbye). If he was in reach of the babies, he tried to touch their arms, hands or bodies, most of the time they shacked hands ;)

We felt that he enjoyed being around these kids as for now we don't have the opportunity in Kuala Lumpur to find a group with the similar age.

After the submission of the documents we had to wait again because they made their lunch break from 1 - 2 pm. Another 1 1/2 hour went by until we could leave the -with hot and stuffy air filled - immigration office.

The 2-years-passports cost RM100 for each person. Martin said it's quite expensive compared to a German passport which would be valid for 10 years (for adults, babies a few years less).

After we took our lunch, Timmy had his first hair cut. Surprisingly, Timmy was very "obedient", he even did not move his head and body when the hairdresser cut his hair. Usually when you touch his head with your hand or put something on his head, he would immediately try to grab your hand or the item on his head. Or when we feed him in the high chair, he looses often his patience after a few minutes and tries to stand up and turns around in the high chair. That's why we thought Timmy would get impatient, scared or even cry at the hair dresser (like the kid on the picture *lol). We guess now it was because the hair dresser used the electric hair cutter instead of the scissor that gave him a new experience & feeling on his head (when it's vibrating). Timmy really gave us lots of surprises in the last few days!

Timmy, we love you! We love all the surprises that you gave us. "muacks.."

Babies - A Cool Documentary!

I came across this trailer while scanning through one of my twitter lists last week.

This visually stunning new movie simultaneously follows four babies around the world - from first breath to first steps. From Mongolia to Namibia to San Francisco to Tokyo, Babies joyfully captures on film the earliest stages of the journey of humanity that are at once unique and universal to us all.

See the world of the babies and their development from another ankle as we never could experience how babies around the desert are raised up.

The documentary shall be released in April 2010, hopefully some cinemas will show this movie and not only Hollywood blockbusters...

What are your impressions of the "Babies" trailer?

Baby development: Who's that in the mirror?

Since the last week our little Timmy boy recognize the persons in the mirrors in our apartment. This is getting much more fun for him now as we have a big mirror in the bath room. There he can always watch what the other little boy is doing in the mirror :)

At the moment he can't recognize that it is him in the mirror but he recognizes us already. In the end he prefers to watch at the real mommy and daddy instead of the two doubles in the mirror :)

Part 1: Introducing solid food for Timmy in the last week

Finally, i have finished my mid-term exam. And now i have the "mood" to update the milestones of Timmy ;-) I was just too stressed during the exam week. But now i am relaxed and feeling good.

In the past few days, i have introduced Timmy apple. And just like what i thought, he loved it XD. What i did was, steaming the apple for 10 minutes until tender. Then i mashed the steamed apple by spoon. I have made the apple in different ways, and i found out Timmy loves the steamed apple most. After tasting it, i personally felt that way too ;-)

When i was not at home, my husband fed him the organic rice cereal. For the first time, Timmy did not really like it but soon he realised that he would not get any milk from mommy, then he started eating the rice cereal. But of course it was such a "huge" battle between my hubby and him ;-) When i was back home, i was so "schock" to see Timmy's face full of the rice cereal.

So far, the solid food has been introduced to Timmy are as follow:
1. banana
2. sweet potato
3. rice cereal
4. apple

By looking at these list, i think i have introduced too much sweet food to Timmy, perhaps i should introduce some vegetables to him next week on.

Milestone of Timmy at 6 months

This is one of my favourite photos of him :-)

Timmy is about 6 months and 2 weeks old. At this stage, he can already turn towards sounds and voices. Therefore, he gets distracted easily during the feeding time. He only will continue drinking the milk without any "interruption".

Besides, he can roll over in both directions very well. Because of this, we always have to take care to make sure he will not fall from the bed again! Although we have a playpen for him, we seldom put him inside. As the playpen is just too small for him. He needs much more space to roll over and move around.

Timmy also can sit without support around some weeks ago, when he was after 5-month-old. From this onwards, Timmy likes to play his toys with sitting position. And now, he even can pass objects from hand to hand. It's really amazing for us to see these developments from him. Sometimes, we put few toys around him and wonder what he will do with these toys. He at first observes the toys and eventually he will drag those objects toward him. He does not need to ask for our help most of the time, he now can try his best to reach the objects that he wants. :-) Or, if you show him the toys in front of him when he is lying down on his back, then he will raise his both hands and want to grab the toys. ;-)

Recently, he starts pushing up his body and try to move with the crawling position. He cannot really crawl yet. But he moves himself backward when the body is up from the "floor". I think he is a backward crawler? And i supposed this is the beginning of crawling :-)

The most interesting development for me is he can now interact with us. When he is in "good mood", he looks at you, making some murmuring sound and trying to "talk" to us ;-) He will just bable and smile all the time.

From his developments, we believe Timmy is ready for solid food at this stage. I have been breastfeeding him for six months and started to give the solid food for him to taste a week ago. So far, he is good with banana and he loves it! These Thursday and Friday, we introduced him the processed organic green peas for him (my parents bought for him), and today-Saturday, his stool was hard and there were only two little ball!!! I cannot believe Timmy has constipation, he has never had the stool like that. We stopped giving him today. We will stop giving him the solid food until he has no more constipation. :-(

If i am not wrong, because of teething, Timmy always mouths objects nowadays. He puts whatever into his mouth from his hands. It's very cute for us!! He is curious at everything, and in the end, he wants to "eat" them! XD However, i think he also wants to ease his pain because of teething.

I look forward to more developments of him :-D It's a very interesting journey in our life.

The first time: Spoonfeeding our baby boy!

It was just two weeks ago as we decided to try to spoonfeed our little boy. As you might know from one of our previous posts, he didn't like anymore to be bottle-fed since May 2009. Before that time he loves to drink from the bottle, he even emptied a bottle with 3 or 4 ounces within 10 minutes. Now it takes up to 45 minutes (with several breaks after 1 ounce) for him.

That was one of the main reasons to try the spoon feeding. We bought a starter pack for babies. That's a mixture with Rice flour and vanillin flavour. At first we thought he wouldn't like the different taste but in the end... he eat and eat and eat and was disappointed as the first ounce was already finished after 15 Minutes.

Let's see when we can start to give him little bit more solid food as this starter pack is just like usual breast milk with little pieces of this rice flour powder.

Baby development: From two to four months

In part two of the baby development we look at the month two until four.

The exciting times began in April as we could see that he began developing his senses. First we recognized that he can see now things more clearly as he followed for example a little toy when we moved it from right to left within a distance of 10 to 15 centimeters. In the last week of April he started with smiling, at first only occasionally, in the following weeks frequently (this was after the nurse asked us if he could already smile ;-) ).

From April on there was also the development of stronger neck muscles visible. He tried to lift up his head from time to time. In the first weeks it was just a few centimeters and the moving of the head from one side to the other side.
From May on he began using his arms to lift up the upper body and from that time on he started to creep around in our bed.

The smiling began to develop now more rapidly and it was not only during the sleeping times that he made the smiles. If you looked at him or if you just said specific words (when he was in the play mood), he started to smile for some seconds. With the beginning of June there was another sound available, not only the different "talking and babbling" sounds like grg, angu, wau and so on. No, now he started to laugh!

In the last week he suddenly turned over which means he rolled from lying on the tummy to lying on the back. Usually when he turns to the back, he will start crying because in this position he can't move that much like in the tummy position.
But as soon as he learned to roll over, he develop the backward crawling. He uses his legs and then he pushes himself back and back again.

In August we will present you the third part of his development from four to six months. We expect that he can sit then or even begin to crawl by using his legs.

Baby development: From zero to two months

Now we reached already the fourth month since our baby Timmy was born in February. It was a time with ups and down in these last four months.

Beginning with the first day and the discovered food intolerance. They had to clean the lung and his stomach because he suddenly began choking and nearly couldn't breath anymore. In this night he had to be transferred to the well-equipped General Hospital in Johor Bahru in a oxygen tent. It was a really scary trip for me in the emergency car as i didn't know how severe this situation was.

He had to stay in that hospital for two weeks. While staying there he used to get many injections because they had to feed him in the first week additional with the common Glucose-Mixture. One day we visited him and then we saw that they put the injection needle on the top of his head. They said there was no more place available on the arms and legs, so they had to find another obvious available vein.

For luck he could drink daily more and more of mommies breast milk, so that they could stop using the outside feeding method.

After this two weeks they allowed us to take him home - how happy we have been when they told us this news!

During the month of march it was mostly a time of sleeping and eating and on some days a longer crying period (especially at night when you usually want to sleep *lol*). It was also a time when we had to learn to control our own sleep rhythm, so that we wouldn't be that tired when he woke up one or two times during the night. But this is one of the most difficult parts of being fresh parents i guess. We also suffered from sleep deprivation and it lasts until now. Hopefully we look into the future and we believe as the next weeks will pass, he will develop a more regular sleeping pattern. At the moment it seems like he sleeps very long in the afternoon and then is awake from 5 am until 7 or 8 am.

Part two with the development from two to four month is following tomorrow.

Our baby's development since birth

For parents it's always important to know if their babies are in line with the actual development of the other babies or if there is a bigger time gap between one of the development, may it be physically, visionally or mentally.

The time frame for certain steps of the baby's development are:

1. smiling
2. focusing the eyes on moving objects
3. moving the head up and down (supporting of the neck muscles)
4. creeping
5. sounds (like babbling)
6. laughing