Inside the infant mind

[Mr. McD]

New study shows that babies can perform sophisticated analyses of how the physical world should behave.

The study, which appears in the May 27 issue of Science, is the first step in a long-term effort to “reverse-engineer” infant cognition by studying babies at ages 3-, 6- and 12-months (and other key stages through the first two years of life) to map out what they know about the physical and social world. That “3-6-12” project is part of a larger Intelligence Initiative at MIT, launched this year with the goal of understanding the nature of intelligence and replicating it in machines.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/infant-cognition-0527.html