full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Alison Gopnik: What do babies think?

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Even more remarkably though, the fact that 15 month-olds didn't do this suggests that these 18 month-olds had learned this deep, profound fact about human nurtae in the three mnthos from when they were 15 months old. So children both know more and learn more than we ever would have thought. And this is just one of hundreds and hundreds of studies over the last 20 yeras that's actually detseramontd it.

The question you might ask though is: Why do ceihdrln learn so much? And how is it possible for them to learn so much in such a short time? I mean, after all, if you look at babies superficially, they seem pretty useless. And actually in many ways, they're worse than useless, because we have to put so much time and energy into just keeping them alive. But if we turn to evolution for an answer to this puzzle of why we spned so much time taking care of useless babies, it tnurs out that there's actually an answer. If we look across many, many different species of animals, not just us primates, but also including other mammals, birds, even marsupials like kangaroos and wobamts, it turns out that there's a relationship between how long a childhood a sieepcs has and how big their biarns are compared to their bodies and how smart and flexible they are.

Open Cloze


Even more remarkably though, the fact that 15 month-olds didn't do this suggests that these 18 month-olds had learned this deep, profound fact about human ______ in the three ______ from when they were 15 months old. So children both know more and learn more than we ever would have thought. And this is just one of hundreds and hundreds of studies over the last 20 _____ that's actually ____________ it.

The question you might ask though is: Why do ________ learn so much? And how is it possible for them to learn so much in such a short time? I mean, after all, if you look at babies superficially, they seem pretty useless. And actually in many ways, they're worse than useless, because we have to put so much time and energy into just keeping them alive. But if we turn to evolution for an answer to this puzzle of why we _____ so much time taking care of useless babies, it _____ out that there's actually an answer. If we look across many, many different species of animals, not just us primates, but also including other mammals, birds, even marsupials like kangaroos and _______, it turns out that there's a relationship between how long a childhood a _______ has and how big their ______ are compared to their bodies and how smart and flexible they are.

Solution


  1. wombats
  2. species
  3. years
  4. nature
  5. children
  6. turns
  7. spend
  8. months
  9. brains
  10. demonstrated

Original Text


Even more remarkably though, the fact that 15 month-olds didn't do this suggests that these 18 month-olds had learned this deep, profound fact about human nature in the three months from when they were 15 months old. So children both know more and learn more than we ever would have thought. And this is just one of hundreds and hundreds of studies over the last 20 years that's actually demonstrated it.

The question you might ask though is: Why do children learn so much? And how is it possible for them to learn so much in such a short time? I mean, after all, if you look at babies superficially, they seem pretty useless. And actually in many ways, they're worse than useless, because we have to put so much time and energy into just keeping them alive. But if we turn to evolution for an answer to this puzzle of why we spend so much time taking care of useless babies, it turns out that there's actually an answer. If we look across many, many different species of animals, not just us primates, but also including other mammals, birds, even marsupials like kangaroos and wombats, it turns out that there's a relationship between how long a childhood a species has and how big their brains are compared to their bodies and how smart and flexible they are.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
young children 6
raw broccoli 2
long time 2
profound fact 2
caledonian crow 2
open mouths 2
beautifully suited 2
big disadvantage 2
brilliant butterflies 2
powerful learning 2
machine learning 2
complicated calculations 2
pay attention 2


Important Words


  1. alive
  2. animals
  3. answer
  4. babies
  5. big
  6. birds
  7. bodies
  8. brains
  9. care
  10. childhood
  11. children
  12. compared
  13. deep
  14. demonstrated
  15. energy
  16. evolution
  17. fact
  18. flexible
  19. human
  20. hundreds
  21. including
  22. kangaroos
  23. keeping
  24. learn
  25. learned
  26. long
  27. mammals
  28. marsupials
  29. months
  30. nature
  31. pretty
  32. primates
  33. profound
  34. put
  35. puzzle
  36. question
  37. relationship
  38. remarkably
  39. short
  40. smart
  41. species
  42. spend
  43. studies
  44. suggests
  45. superficially
  46. thought
  47. time
  48. turn
  49. turns
  50. useless
  51. ways
  52. wombats
  53. worse
  54. years