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How We See Evolution In Babies

By Julia Austin

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 21Jan2012 Word count: 421 Viewed: 169 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

I recently took a class on evolution, and while sometimes I found the teachings logical, sometimes I struggled to believe that our environment was not the primary cause for our behavior. I have always believed that my behaviors, my preferences, my fears—all of my characteristics—I had learned from my parents, from school, or picked up from friends. It is hard to see evolution take place in adults. In an attempt to see evolution at work in more areas, I asked myself: what living being is yet completely uninfluenced by his or her environment? And I realize the answer was babies. From there I realized there are actually plenty of activities that babies are capable of that must be a result of evolution, like these:

Analyze facial expressions: A person who has been attacked by a dog has a logical fear of dogs. But, you'll notice that a baby can look at a growling dog and recognize danger. If a dog growls or barks, a baby will instantly begin crying. A baby understands the sounds and facial expressions of a dog as indicative of aggression and danger.

Learn cause and effect: You may have heard the term "negative reinforcement" when it comes to psychology. The idea is you essentially reward someone for doing something bad. A perfect example is parents who give their babies affection, a bottle, or even certain foods as soon as the baby cries. The parent does it to silence the baby—to remove the crying—but what they are really doing is encouraging the baby to cry more. The baby realizes that the crying (the cause) results in bottle/affection/food (the effect). You'll notice that babies who are given something when they cry tend to cry more.

Crave fats: In a culture saturated in food around every corner, we have had to learn to curb our cravings for sugar and fats. We can even condition our palates to crave healthier foods. A baby does not yet know that fatty foods are bad for him, or that foods like fruits and vegetables are good for him, and you will notice that babies tend to favor fatty foods.

Sing: A video about singing on The Singing Zone mentions that babies know how to sing and I realize, that is absolutely correct! Before they can speak actual words, babies do know how to use different notes and tones to convey emotions, which is exactly what singing does.

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