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Bringing Up Baby

Fabio Consoli for NPR

Bababababa, dadadadada, ahgagaga. Got that?

Babies are speaking to us all the time, but most of us have no clue what they're saying. To us non-babies, it all sounds like charming, mysterious, gobbledegook. To researchers, though, babbling is knowable, predictable, and best of all, teachable. This week, we'll find out how to decipher the vocabulary, and the behavior, of the newest members of the human family.

In the second half of the show, we'll look at the relationship between children and the adults who care for them. Alison Gopnik, a psychology and philosophy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, says parents—especially middle-class parents—view their children as entities they can mold into a specific image.

"The idea is that if you just do the right things, get the right skills, read the right books, you're going to be able to shape your child into a particular kind of adult," she says.

But, she says, this view doesn't align with the research on children's development. In her latest book, The Gardener and the Carpenter,Alison lays out an alternative way to think about the relationship between parents and children.

Additional reading (and viewing):

There are a wealth of interesting videos on the language and behavior of babies and toddlers. We recommend:

  • This demonstration of Laura Cirelli's experiment with music and synchrony in babies.
  • This video of a little girl named Katrina during a dinnertime meltdown. In a 2011 study, Researchers Mike Potegal and James Green found that tantrums involve two predictable emotions: anger, followed by distress.
  • And check out this video of a baby demonstrating repeated syllables known as "canonical babbling."
  • This episode was produced by Parth Shah and Rhaina Cohen and was edited by Tara Boyle. Our team includes Jenny Schmidt, Thomas Lu and Laura Kwerel. Our intern is Camila Vargas-Restrepo. Follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain, and listen for our stories each week on your local public radio station.

    Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    Shankar Vedantam is the host and creator of Hidden Brain. The Hidden Brain podcast receives more than three million downloads per week. The Hidden Brain radio show is distributed by NPR and featured on nearly 400 public radio stations around the United States.
    Parth Shah is an associate producer at Hidden Brain. He came to NPR in 2016 as a Kroc Fellow.
    Rhaina Cohen is an associate producer for the social science show Hidden Brain. She's especially proud of episodes she produced on why sexual assault allegations are now being taken seriously, on obstacles to friendship that men face and why we rehash difficult memories.
    Tara Boyle is the supervising producer of NPR's Hidden Brain. In this role, Boyle oversees the production of both the Hidden Brain radio show and podcast, providing editorial guidance and support to host Shankar Vedantam and the shows' producers. Boyle also coordinates Shankar's Hidden Brain segments on Morning Edition and other NPR shows, and oversees collaborations with partners both internal and external to NPR. Previously, Boyle spent a decade at WAMU, the NPR station in Washington, D.C. She has reported for The Boston Globe, and began her career in public radio at WBUR in Boston.