Although it might seem that after birth we are helpless creatures who only cry, sleep and eat, in fact our brains are already equipped with intuitive knowledge about the laws of physics, argue scientists whose conclusions are published by the EurekAlert website.
“We are born with certain expectations about the objects around us, though this is something we’ve never been taught. As a child grows, this knowledge is verified and leads to the development of skills that we use as adults, ”says Kristy van Marle of the University of Missouri (USA), who observed the reactions of newborns to different situations by examining the knowledge of basic information about objects.
An analysis of the scientific literature from the last 30 years has shown that the first signs of intuitive knowledge can be observed in two-month-old children. Even then, toddlers know, for example, that objects that we release from our hands fall, and objects that have been hidden do not cease to exist. Moreover, research suggests that before the fifth month of life, children instinctively orient themselves in the state of matter aggregation, e.g. they know that water is not a solid.
“Most of our interactions in adulthood are automated. We believe that newborns have the same ability to form expectations and predict how the objects and substances they interact with will behave, says van Marle. “If a cup of milk falls off the table, we may try to catch it, but we are unlikely to catch the substance that spills out of it.”