Smart Babies and Genius Toddlers

For some reason, there has been a common thread running through my life the past few months. In discussions with adults on internet forums and in real life, my idea that all kids are born “learning machines” has met with disagreement. People don't say it right out loud, but their hundreds of words seem to boil down to the idea that many kids just aren't smart.

Yeah, there are genetic differences among people. Yeah, we all have our own talents and weaknesses—we are not just born as blank slates, ready to be programmed by parents and teachers.

But I keep going back to what I know: I have never (or at least almost never) met a baby or a toddler that didn't seem very, very smart.

NOTE: Presumably some babies are born with the sort of genetic glitch or birth trauma that really impairs their ability to learn and function. I may have met one such, although watching him made me think that he might be learning quite a bit but unable to express it through action or language because of his physical disabilities.

Little kids learn language, or languages, in great big gulps. As they learn about how things and creatures and people act in the world, they create a sort of folk biology, physics, and psychology. They say incredible things that show just how much they absorb of adult words and attitudes—this is the little-kids-as-sponges theory—AND that show how fresh and original their thinking can be—this is the little-kids-as-one-of-a-kind-potential-geniuses theory. All of them (or almost all of them) are, I maintain, unbelievably good at what they do: learning.

Here is an old, old study (well, not as old as I am!) that is still quoted as relevant:

In the 1960s, educators George Land and Beth Jarman gave 1,600 3- to 5-year-old kids a creativity test used by NASA. They retested the same kids five years later and again ten years later. At the same time, they gave the same test to a large group of adults over the age of 25.

Here's what Land and Jarman found (according to their findings published in 1968):

• 3 – 5 year olds – 98% scored at genius level

• 8 – 10 year olds – 32% scored at genius level

• 13 – 15 year olds – 10% scored at genius level

• adults – 2% scored at genius level

We are born creative. Pretty darn near all of us are born creative geniuses. We either learn not to be creative, or something in our mental or social development shuts off our creativity.

I touch on this with an earlier post on creativity studies. Soon I will post some additional studies that deal with creativity among adults. But for now, I leave you with one simple, and hopeful, finding:

According to Johah Lehrer, undergraduate college students were asked to imagine school being canceled and a whole unplanned, uninterrupted day of freedom stretching before them. They are asked, “What would you do? Where would you go? Who would you see?”

One group was given this scenario with the first sentence, “You are seven years old.” Their imagining of a free day is as their childish self. The second group was given the exact same scenario without the harkening back to age seven; presumably these students imagined their day of freedom at their current age, 18 to 20 or so.

Ten minutes after the imagination task, the subjects were given tests of creativity. The young adults who had a few minutes earlier imagined themselves at age seven scored far higher in creativity!

This study was done by psychologists Darya Zabelina and Michael Robinson of North Dakota State University. To sum up their findings in one simple recommendation:

To unleash your creativity, just imagine yourself as a little kid.