Adults are Big Babies

coberst

Adults are Big Babies

The infant feels the world before s/he knows the world or speaks to that world. The infant above all else feels mom, perhaps even more than mom feels the baby. The world is meaningful to the infant because the feelings of that infant make indelible marks upon its neural network that we call the brain.

The inner world of infants has become illuminated by new experimental techniques, which allow experimenters to test hypothesis. Eye movements are especially useful for such experiments; for example, infants indicate their boredom by their drifting eyes when shown the same visual image over and over.

The infant begins (like all animals) with its various sensorimotor and conceptual capacities; all of which define its mental limitations regarding what in the world can be experienced and how that experience becomes meaningful to humans.

Babies must learn the meaning of objects and events “that will eventually make up their mature, shared experience of a common world”. The baby starts the learning process with various plastic and dynamic mental capacities intimately coupled with more fixed sensorimotor and conceptual capacities that determine the constraints on what can be experienced and how that experience can be meaningful to humans.

“We thus grow into a meaningful world by learning how to “take the measure” of our ongoing, flowing, continuous experience. We grow into the ability to experience meaning, and we grow into shared, interpersonal meanings and experiences.”