Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
July 21, 1993, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section C; Page 10; Column 3; National Desk; Health Page
LENGTH: 1570 words
HEADLINE: 'Expert' Babies Found to Teach Others
BYLINE: By DANIEL
GOLEMAN
BODY:
IT was during the blustery days of last March that 10-month-old Russell Ruud
taught the other babies in his day-care group a lesson their parents may have
wished he hadn't: how to unzip the Velcro chin straps of their winter hats.
"One day I went to pick Russell up and his teacher told me that the other
mothers were complaining that their children had learned from him how to take
off their hats," said Dr. Judith Ruud, Russell's mother and, at the time, an economist at the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, just a few blocks from the Trinity Preschool
in Manhattan.
"I never showed Russell how to unzip the Velcro," said Ms. Ruud, now with the Congressional Budget Office in Washington.
"He learned it by trial and error, and the other kids saw him do it one day when
they were getting dressed for an outing."
While Russell's tutorial was perhaps not what all parents would want their
children to learn at school, it exemplifies something that new research is
identifying as an unexpected advantage of day care and play groups: even the
youngest toddlers are able to learn new skills from each other, and the
abilities one acquires can quickly spread to others.
"The surprise is to find that preverbal babies can take home with them what they
learn from other babies," said Dr. Andrew N. Meltzoff, a developmental psychologist at the University of
Washington, who has conducted a series of studies with 128
toddlers showing they have a remarkable ability to learn from each other, and
that what they learn in a group is retained outside the group setting. An
article on his findings appears in the July issue of the journal Developmental
Psychology.
To be sure, every parent knows that children learn a lot from their playmates.
But the new findings push back the earliest age at which children were thought
to learn skills from each other to a stage of life before children are able to
talk.
Positive Picture of Day Care
One implication is that day care for young toddlers may represent an enriched
educational setting simply because it exposes children to other children and
their diversity of simple skills. The findings come at a time when day care is
a fact of life for more and more parents; Census Bureau data
suggest that one of the fastest-growing segments of the work force is mothers
of children under 1 year old.
The new research may offer a bit of solace to working parents with regard to a
choice that many cannot avoid. And these findings fit with others that give a
positive picture of the long-term impact of early day care.
"We have data showing that the earlier kids start in high-quality day care, the
more advantaged they are intellectually and socially in the long run," said Dr. Tiffany Field, a psychologist in the pediatrics department at the
University of Miami Medical School.
In her research, published in the journal Child Development in 1991, Dr. Field
evaluated 84 children in the first through sixth grades and found that those
who had started day care early fared best academically and
socially.
Other experts are more cautious.
"There may be some small advantage for very young children in day care because
of this kind of imitative learning, though I certainly wouldn't make that a
main reason for sending a child," said Dr. Lewis Lippsitt, a developmental psychologist at Brown University.
The learning that goes on in the first year or two of life is through watching
and imitating. Such learning among toddlers in day care is something like the
cooperative learning that is gaining popularity in elementary and high schools.
Some experts believe this pooling of skills may in part explain other findings
of enhanced development among children who attended high-quality day care when
compared with those who stayed home or had poor care.
Babies Remember Skills
"The new twist was to test whether
young toddlers would imitate their peers, and whether this learning was robust
enough to persist at home after a substantial passage of time," said Dr. Meltzoff, who did the research with Elizabeth Hanna, a graduate
student. Psychologists have long studied how infants use a natural talent as
mimics to learn how to handle the challenges of life.
The researchers invented five simple toys that a 1-year-old could master with
some coaching, so that none of the babies would have seen them before or
learned how to use them elsewhere. One toy, for example, was a collapsible
plastic cup made of progressively larger rings; the cup would collapse if a
child pushed it down with a flat hand. Another allowed a baby to ring a bell by
pressing a button hidden in a hole in a
box.
In the first phase of the study, babies an average of 14 months old were
trained as
"experts" by sitting on their mother's laps while they watched an experimenter
demonstrate a toy. The children then tried the toys themselves and were praised
for using them correctly.
Next, the expert babies showed other babies how each of the five toys worked by
playing with them while the others watched. The babies who watched were given a
chance to play with the toys for a few minutes immediately after the
demonstration; they played with each of the five toys correctly 64 percent of
the time.
In a later phase of the study, with children of about 20 months old, expert
toddlers were brought into a day- care center and, after playing with the other
toddlers, demonstrated the toys while the others were seated around a
table watching. The expert babies demonstrated each toy just once, with the
others watching but not allowed to touch. Then all the toddlers went back to
playing.
It wasn't until two days later, when the toys were brought to the homes of all
the toddlers who had watched, that they were able to play with them at all.
They played properly with the toys 72 percent of the time.
Advantages Persist for Years
"These findings provide direct evidence that young toddlers in day care centers
can learn and remember what they see other children do, even after a
substantial delay and in a completely different setting," said Dr. Meltzoff.
"And this learning is without any chance for trial and error themselves, but
simply by watching another toddler do something just once."
While earlier research, including several studies by
Dr. Meltzoff, had demonstrated that even very young babies can imitate simple
acts, these experiments are the first to test if toddlers can remember and
repeat what they have seen after time has passed and in a different setting,
without the memory cues that setting might offer. Such long-term transfer of
memory is considered a crucial test of learning in everyday life.
"This imitative learning is a large part of why kids in good early day care have
advantages in the long run," said Dr. Field.
"When we looked at kids in elementary school, the earlier they had started day
care, the higher their scores on math tests and the more likely they were to be
in gifted programs, the more popular they were with their peers, the more
assertive their teachers rated them and the more emotionally stable they were."
The advantages of early day care may persist into the teen-age years,
according to findings from a 1992 Swedish study, which evaluated 128 children
at age 13. A government subsidy allows for what many experts consider to be
model day care programs, and many Swedish children begin day care before they
are 1 year old. The Swedish study focused on children who entered day care at
from 6 to 12 months of age.
In an earlier evaluation of the children when they were 8 years old, the
Swedish researchers found that those who entered day care before their first
birthday were rated by their third-grade teachers as more persistent,
independent, verbally facile, calm and socially confident than other children.
They found no negative characteristics common to the children in early day care
group.
Five years later, as the children entered adolescence, some advantages
for those who entered day care at an early age still held: they performed
better academically and were more creative, popular and independent than the
other children.
Finding Quality Day Care
The quality of day care is crucial.
"Low-quality day care does not have the advantages," said Dr. Field. In addition, while these two studies show surprisingly
long-term benefits of day care, experts say that the final word about
advantages and drawbacks of day care is not yet in. A large Federal study of
many different sites is now under way.
Points to look for in day care include an optimal ratio of children to
teachers. If there are too many teachers, for instance, they may socialize more
with each other than with the children; if there are too few teachers, the
result is a destructive chaos. For
1-year-olds, a 4-to-1 ratio of children to teachers is considered best; for 2
and 3 year olds there should be an 8-to-1 ratio and for 4 and 5 year olds there
should be a 12-to-1 ratio, said Dr. Field.
"High quality also means an enriched environment, with plenty of toys and other
materials, enough space for kids to play on their own and a well-organized
daily routine," he said.
"In addition to what kids in day care learn from each other and their teachers,
they also learn how to get along as sociable creatures, so that when they get
to grade school they don't have to figure that out and can focus better on
their academic work."
GRAPHIC: Photos: AN 'EXPERT' BABY, right, 14 months old, has been trained to take apart
a simple toy as part of a learning study at the University of Washington. The
untutored child at left observes, without being allowed to play with the toy.;
THE UNTUTORED TODDLER then gets to play with the same toy after a five-minute
delay, and in the final frame in this sequence succeeds in pulling the toy
apart. In the study, children who observed were successful 64 percent of the
time. (Photographs by Elizabeth Hanna and Dr. Andrew N. Meltzoff/Infant Studies
Laboratory at the University of Washington)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: July 21, 1993
