Those who until a few years ago thought that the baby's brain was a flat tab They soon saw that they were very wrong, and the children are born with a very immature brain, but already prepared for certain lessons.
A couple of years ago we confirm that they are able to recognize the mother tongue even if they stop hearing it, because they are already born with a certain predisposition to learn that language.
Well, recent research shows that, in addition, they come to the world with certain numerical knowledge that nobody before can have taught them.
Prefer small numbers on the left
As we read in NewScientist, researchers from the University of Padua, in Italy, have carried out an investigation thanks to which they have concluded that newborns like that the smallest numbers are on the left, and the largest on the right, suggesting that it is an early way of ordering from least to greatest in a line that goes from left to right.
That is precisely the pattern that Westerners use to make sequences, from left to right, and although we can vary by placing the values from highest to lowest, or from least to greatest, our numbers when counting range from units to tens and hundreds, in a progression that goes from a single number to then two, three and so on.
To carry out the research, they took a group of newborns between 12 and 117 hours of age, being the average age of 55 hours (two days old).
These babies were shown a series of images with white squares that contained a number of smaller black squares. Half of the time they were placed in front of a chip with two white squares containing ** four black squares each **, on one side and on the other (left and right); the other half of the time they put another piece with two white squares that contained 36 black squares, on Both Sides.
With an eye tracking device they observed that they looked more to the left when they had the chip with less squares inside, and that they looked more to the right when they had the one that contained more black squares.
The right brain is more developed
According to experts, the answer to this phenomenon could be because the right side of the brain is bigger in babies. This side is the one that dominates the left eye, and perhaps that's why babies have more attention to what is located on that side as the beginning of things, or progressions.
Although there are those who believe that it might not be an innate number line, but of a possible matter of laterality or similar: that babies associate the simplest images with the left and the most complex with the right, which is usually the dominant hand.
In any case, it is an incredible investigation that opens the door to a greater and better knowledge of the human brain a few hours after birth, when it has not yet been able to be influenced by the theoretical events and principles of our current knowledge.
