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Babies at 5 Months old can Add
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Suppose we show a baby an empty box and put one doll inside. Then add another doll. Then show the box with two dolls. While this is being done secretly we measure the time it takes the baby to look at the box. This process is repeated several times. We will find that soon the baby’s “looking” time becomes shorter or “habituated.”
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We repeat the same process of putting one doll, then another doll inside the box. But this time we will secretly remove one doll from the box. Then we will show the box with just one doll and measure the “looking” time again. This time the baby’s will “look” at the box is longer or “dishabituated” because this is something “new” and “unexpected.”
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This type of experiment has been done by Karen Wynn at her Cognition Laboratory at the University of Arizona and she concluded that babies look longer at events that violate their expectations. Babies of 4 to 5 months old were seated in front of a stage. At this stage they will see Mickey mouse. A screen comes up to hide Mickey. A hand appears holding another Mickey mouse and placed near the first one behind the screen. The screen is pulled down showing two dolls which is the expected result for addition, or one doll which they did not expect. Will the babies look longer at the expected outcome or not? The experiment by Karen Wynn showed that babies look longer at the unexpected result, one Mickey.
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The experiment was repeated demonstrating subtraction. Karen first place two dolls on the stage. The screen goes up concealing them. A hand appears and remove one doll and the screen goes down and showed one or two dolls. When the unexpected result, two dolls, is on the stage, the babies look longer.
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Before the addition and subtraction experiment, Karen first measured the looking time for one doll or two dolls. The result was the same time.
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This experiment by Karen Wynn was the first one to show that babies indeed can differentiate simple quantities, one from two.
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