If you have ever looked your baby in the eye and it has given you the impression that he is thinking carefully about something in particular or you feel that he stares at you as if he were studying you while you do some activity, you may be right.
Although our children are not able to communicate precisely what they think until they start saying their first sentences, a recent study found that Babies are able to reason before they reach their first year of age and start talking.
According to the results of this new research published in the magazine Science, it was found that at 12 months of age, babies have the ability to reason, doing it through the elimination process. This conclusion came after analyzing the movements of the eyes of 48 babies, through small animations.
In them, two distinguishable and identifiable objects appeared by babies: a dinosaur and a flower. Then, both objects were placed behind a barrier and one of them, the dinosaur for example, was removed, so logically the object that was behind the barrier and was shown when removed, was the flower.
But in the event that the dinosaur was removed, and when removing the barrier he would continue to appear and not the flower, the babies were confused. Thus, it is concluded that they know and understand through the elimination process. That is, what we think when we have two options: A and B, and we realize that option A does not work for us or does not work or is not the one indicated, it must be the other.
In this case, as babies still cannot express themselves through words, what researchers do is track the eyes and their expressions, as well as measure the amount of time they keep their eyes fixed to know if a baby is surprised or interested.
So even if your baby does not answer you yet, it does not mean that he does not understand what you say or do, because he speaks in his mind before uttering his first words and since before his first birthday, he is attentive to everything that happens around him, while his brain every day learns new things.
