Innate modernization?

Question

Why do babies like to push buttons, flip light switches (toggle)

and drive pretend cars, I know they copy us but this has always seemed a little like future knowledge to me. I didn't know what words to do a search. Thanks.

Answer 1

babies will experiment with anything you put in front of them, and the more "unpredictably" the object acts in response to them the more interesting it will be. its not that they are drawn to technology; they are drawn to things. and most of the things that happen to be around the house are technological in nature, especially the more "interesting" ones from the baby's point of view

Answer 2

Well, they're exploring whatever happens to be in their world, and exploring themselves and what they can do.

So, if a baby does a gesture, and it has effect, they keep doing it, out of curiosity, and out of the enjoyment of having effect on the world.

And, yes, they imitate what the grown-ups do. Little boys watch their fathers shave, and then they practice shaving themselves.

Kids who grow up around smoking grown-ups will "smoke" things that are like cigs in size and shape. (Yes, yet another reason to not smoke around them.)

It's inherent in little ones to immitate -- that's how they learn stuff. They're driven to pick up the behaviors and actions and skills of those in their world.

That's why it's more important what parents DO than what they explicitly teach.

If you try to "teach" children to say "please" -- but never use the word yourself, they won't pick it up.

But if you simply use it, they will start using it themselves.

"Future knowledge"? Dunno what you mean. If you could have sent a cell phone back to my living room when I was a toddler, I wouldn't have had a clue, as I'd never seen anyone use one.

Answer 3

Why?

For the same reason Edmund Hillary climbed Mount Everest...

"Because it was there"...

Answer 4

How about starting with some basic word combinations that might pop the exact word you are looking for?

infant/child/early learning curiosity

infant/child/early motor/sensory learning

infant/child/early tactile/spatial learning

infant/child/early mimicry/copying behavior/imitate communication

infant/child/early exploration

infant/child/early intelligence development

infant/child/early gender difference impulse creative

perhaps together with certain figures in psychoanalysis-psychology-cognitive science of early childhood?

Freud

Abram Maslow

Piaget

or a name of a publication such as Science, Nature, Scientific American, American Science, Discovery, National Geographic, BBC, Time, Newsweek or Sciencetoday?

Answer 5

Hi, what you are referring to is enculturation, when the young in a society copy their elders in order to learn how to live in their culture when they grow up.

As others have said part of this is more of an innate feature of children is to treat anything as a 'toy' - to explore the word around them.

This is also why children play cops and robbers, mums and dads, and like to play with toys that resemble objects found in the home like play kitchens, cubby houses etc... they are copying what they are seeing their elders do and hence learning their culture that they will grow up in.

Innate modernization does sound very cool (good name for a song perhaps), but I'm afraid I don't think this is the case, it is children learning the culture that they see around them in order to survive and have mastery of their environment when they grow older... whether it involves hunting and gathering for food in the Amazon rainforest or learning to use a microwave and computer in our technological / industrial societies. I do think it is interesting though that children are using this technology at such as a young age that has never before existed in human history.

Hope this helps.