14 DAY TRIAL // A team of investigators from the Birkbeck College, in London, the United Kingdom, was recently able to determine that small children become capable of discerning adults' moods by the tone of their voices when they reach the age of 7 months. Additionally, it was also found that they can do this by using the same type of mental processes that adults do. The fact that this ability develops so early on in a child's life again underlines the evolutionary importance of being able to empathize, the research team says, quoted by LiveScience.
Emotional communication, even the kind that does not use words, is of great importance for our species, as many anthropologists believe it may have set the foundation for our cooperative behavior. This in turn allowed us to form increasingly-large societies, pool our resources together, and eventually learn how to control the entire planet. The investigation in question lends new credence to this idea. Experts are unable to find another justification as to why children learn to discern moods before they manage to take their first steps.
The team behind the investigation states that the mental processes small children use vary considerably over the course of a few months. To test this hypothesis, the researchers, led by expert Tobias Grossmann, looked at several infants, aged 4 to 7 months. They outfitted the children with comfortable, high-tech hats that were able to determine the amount of oxygen each of their brain regions was consuming. The non-invasive imaging method, called near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), allows for experts to determine which brain areas require more oxygen when a given task is performed. An increased intake of the stuff is generally associated with a higher level of activity at that location.
Together with German colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, the Birkbeck College team compared results obtained from the 4- and 7-month-olds. They learned that the “older” babies were in fact capable of processing sounds heard over a loudspeaker using the same brain regions adults do. They were made to listen to various voices, while their mothers were holding them comfortably in their laps. The brain of 4-month-olds used different areas of the cortex for emotion processing, which the researchers likened to the brain's “baby teeth.” Details of the work appear in the March 25 issue of the respected scientific journal Neuron.