Ten month-old babies understand others' thoughts

What age do you think your baby was when it started to understand you? New research suggests that babies as young as ten months old can start to understand another person’s thought process.

Communication is a vital part of a child’s development process but this study from the University of Missouri points to infants understanding other people’s thought processes even before they can verbally communicate themselves.

In the study, infants were monitored during different trials of a common psychological test.

In the test an actor showed a preference for certain objects. Researchers then timed the infant's gaze, which is an indication of infant knowledge. The children watched longer when the actor's preferences changed, which led the researchers to believe that infants understood how the actor interacted with the objects.

Study leader Yuyan Luo said: “When the actor did not witness the removal or addition of the preferred object, the infants seemed to use that information to interpret the person's actions.

"The infants appear to recognise that the actor's behaviour comes from what the actor could see or could not see and hence what the actor thinks. This finding is consistent with similar false belief studies that involve older children.”

False belief is a term psychologists use when the thought processes of other people are understood even if they diverge from what the subjects know as true.

This is thought to be the first study to look at the area of false belief in children under the age of one. Further research in the area is needed and Dr Luo thinks this will lead to further understanding of how humans learn to communicate.

"In adults, beliefs guide behaviour, but it would be difficult to explain another person's behaviour without explaining his or her mental state," Dr Luo said.

This article was published on Wed 2 November 2011