The Intelligent Infant

In its first two years, the human infant displays almost none of its potential. Besides being helpless, babies also seem singularly dumb, and consistently lose intelligence contests when pitted against chimpanzees of the same age. Nothing in the child's limited repertory of action suggests the truly incredible skills that time and experience will hone.

Nonetheless, Psychologist Jerome S. Bruner believes that they must be there, that the full splendor of intelligence is part of the human birthright. Everything the infant needs--to master a tongue, to coax new music from strings, to find undiscovered stars--is already embedded in his nervous system. To test this premise, Harvard's Center for Cognitive Studies has been conducting a series of unusual experiments on the human baby. The studies are based on Bruner's conviction that the infant is "a complicated programming system" and that a great deal of research on the child has presumed too much. In observing babies, Bruner tells his students, "assume that you are studying the great-chested jabberwocky and find out how he acts."

Precision Tool. Instead of zeroing in on the infant mind, which is almost impossible to test, Bruner has concentrated on the hand. This remarkable instrument, so ineffectual at birth, rapidly develops into a precision tool. By the fourth week, most babies will grasp anything their fingers touch. Bruner has devised a series of experiments calculated to throw light not on what the baby's hand can do, but on how the baby discovers the ability to do it.

In one such test, the young subject is held in his mother's lap within reach of a puzzle box. Behind a sliding transparent panel, a toy is placed to snare the subject's attention. To collect this fascinating prize, the baby must hold the panel open while plundering the box of its contents. Bruner's youngest subjects --under one year--typically reach for the toy with one hand, encounter the transparent obstacle and bang on it or give up, either in slumber, indifference or tears. Older babies may manage to slide the panel up with one hand, then grope awkwardly into the interior and, despite the panel's resistance, occasionally grasp the reward. The most sophisticated infants use both hands, one to hold the panel open, the other to reach inside.

Faltering Language. As analyzed by Bruner, these somewhat predictable results yield some provocative insights into the nature of the intellect. No one teaches a baby the value of two-handedness. Yet at a certain stage in its development, the baby discovers this by itself. To Bruner, this is as if the knowledge were already there. In all of his experiments, he has repeatedly been struck by the same suspicion: that intention (the will to do something) precedes skill (the ability to do it).

This suspicion lies only a short distance from the conviction of some modern linguists that because man is the only animal that speaks, he must therefore be the only animal with an inherent capacity to do so. Like a bud, this marvelous ability lies fallow in the newborn, awaiting only the right influence to release it. To Bruner, the infant hand speaks a kind of faltering language at birth, and incrementally exhibits its innate competence--just as the neuromuscular system involved in speech, by conquering its inexperience, ultimately produces syntax and fluency. Another experiment has helped persuade Bruner of certain parallels between the acquisition of muscular competence and of speech. An infant is given a cup of milk. It first draws the cup in at any angle and spills most of the contents. Quite abruptly, however, without trial and error, the problem is solved. In a sequence of jerky and separate movements, the baby brings the cup to its lips. With practice, the sequence smooths itself into a confident and continuous act. All that seems to be needed is a few months of maturity.

This is almost exactly the way man masters language: first by articulating the meaningful bits of sound that linguists call phonemes, next by linking these bits into words, and finally by making whole sentences. If this were the result of a learning process, argues Bruner, man's grasp would be forever limited by what he has learned to reach. Yet the fact is that the gift of language carries with it the capacity to braid words into sentences that have never been spoken before. Any normal child of two can do it.

Cognition Growth. Bruner's work with babies grew out of earlier studies with children between the ages of three and twelve. He was impressed by the competence of three-year-olds, decided to look at the earliest stages of intelligent being--"what was the nature of infancy, what could we say about how infancy prepares a child for this life and culture?" His experiments seem to challenge the prevailing psychological theories that say, in effect, that the baby climbs toward intellectual maturity from a very humble level, along a series of predetermined steps.

The implications of Bruner's experiments are far-reaching. If he is able to demonstrate the innate intelligence of the infant, it may remind educators of the root meaning of their profession, which is to educe, or lead out, rather than to impose learning. Bruner himself concedes that it is far too early for conclusions. His first tiny subjects, advertised for in the Harvard Crimson, arrived at the center only last spring. "It is astonishing how little we, in an advanced technological society, know about these matters," Bruner has said. He is even more astonished by how much there is to learn.

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