Remember that movie from the 90’s where the babies all talked in a secret language? And were super smart? And the government found out and took them to Area 51 to perform torturous and cruel experiments?
Although I may have one small part of the plot confused, I totally remember seeing this in theaters.
I was just a kid myself, but I remember having an Angelica a la Rugrats meets Clarity Claire moment…“They can’t do that. They’re just pudgy meat incapable of conversation! Barely conscious! Hardly even sentient creatures!”
And unclothed.
#bestlogicever
But now that I’m blahty-blah years old and’ve just held a newborn creature in my arms that shares my bloodline, something’s changed in that line of thinking (yes, only just now).
My niece had it made before she was even made. With my brother and sister-in-law’s mutual looks, intelligence, and wake-up-and-kick-ass attitude about life, I knew she was going to be perfect. I’m not going to sit here and say a bunch of things I don’t know about her yet, but so far it’s kind of amazing to see a human who’s not even four months alive have – I dunno – a personality. Homegirl slept through a flight to Dubai (that’s like 12 hours), wakes up from naps smiling, identifies herself in a mirror, and mimics her mom’s facial expressions perfectly.
What the hell? I shat and cried and had ear infections when I was her age.
When we argue, sometimes I’ll tell my mom “you made me this way!”. But when I think about it, I think I drove her insane before I even knew how to speak or remember all that screaming #selectivememory
But is it selective memory? Did I know how to speak?
There’s this video of twin toddlers that’s (kinda old now) circulated around the net. They seem like they’re well involved in a serious, albeit light-hearted conversation.
Chances are these babies won’t remember this intense exchange when they’re my age any more than I recall assaulting my mom’s auditory organs. This is because until we’re two or so, we only have “semantic” memory (conceptual meanings, cause-effect stuff) ability. Later on, the “episodic” memory (places we go, shit we do) kicks in and we might be able to dig up mental imagery of our first dog, a favorite blanket, or cutting off all of our own hair and then trying to glue it back on with pancake batter.
As for the language?
Researchers over at Newscastle and Cornell seem to think that, yeah, babies can converse and comprehend at least some bits of language – and employ far more complicated grammar than we give ‘em credit for (intentionally ironic prepositional phrase finishing). They recognize faces and if you acclimate them to a word like “hat” or “bike” and then throw it back into a monologue of foreign words, their brains light up when they hear “hat” or “bike” again – or if they see a face during a cascade of random images.
That’s why they say not to exaggerate or use baby talk with infants. It’s like prepping someone to blend in for a covert operation with textbook Arabic devoid of familiar colloquialisms.
Let’s just hope all those brain experiments they do to run these tests happen before episodic memory sets in – so they don’t get confused about identity and stuff…
“I was just about to ask you the same. Fancy a Rubik’s Cube?”