# Babies' Helen Keller Moment **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 2, 2022, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826 "2022-05-02T17:36:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/1 "2022-05-02T17:36:32Z")
You know that scene in _The Miracle Worker_ when the young Helen Keller suddenly realizes that the gestures Annie has been trying to teach her have meaning? In one moment she discovered the ideas of language and communication. Which are pretty abstract concepts. Especially when the have to occur out of the blue; sudden epiphanies that instantly change her understanding of the universe she lives in. Shower thought: don’t babies have to have the same epiphany, but at auch younger age? Is there any research on approximately when, or how, that happens in your average rugrat? ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/2 "2022-05-02T17:49:50Z")
There’s a series of “epiphany” moments for different cognitive and perceptual milestones. The entire field of cognitive development is about this. > **[Cognitive development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_development)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of the developed adult brain and cognitive psychology. Qualitative differences between how a child processes their waking experience and how an adult processes their waking experience are acknowledged (such as object permanence, t... ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/3 "2022-05-02T18:06:12Z")
A lot of it happens in broad bands. A baby doesn’t have a sudden moment when they realize they can make words. They make lots of random sounds, but some of those sounds (like _dada_ or _mama_) get very nice reactions from the adults and so those get repeated. Overall, we still don’t know much about language acquisition in babies. We know they’re **very** good at it, but not necessarily why. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/4 "2022-05-02T18:39:50Z")
[Here](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1095317543) is a transcript of a recent episode of the public radio program Fresh Air, in which Dave Davies interviews John Colapinto, who wrote a book about the human voice. The conversation touches on speech and language development among babies, such as the fact that babies’ crying differs depending on the language the parents speak, so that a German baby sounds different from a French baby. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/5 "2022-05-02T18:43:08Z")
I expect it’s more gradual and less epiphany for babies. Helen Keller had the benefit of having gone through 19 months of normal speech development and having several years of brain development and experiencing the world. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/6 "2022-05-02T18:45:38Z")
Semi Hijack What astounds me is Object Permanence. Up to a certain age, babies don’t realize that things they cannot perceive with their senses (such as a toy hidden by a screen) still exist. Then they do. I find it astounding and fascinating. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/7 "2022-05-02T18:56:50Z")
Infants are optimized for learning language, it happens gradually, they can communicate in baby talk before they have formal language. Children don’t normally face the level of frustration Helen Keller did in her dark and silent world. However, she also was not born blind and deaf, she became ill at about a year and a half old, had some memory of hearing and speech, and not shown in the movie was the set of signs she used to communicate with her family and the household staff by the time Anne Sullivan began to teach her. I think the breakthrough illustrated in The Miracle Worker was at a somewhat higher level than just associating signs for the word water with the substance, it was about a breakthrough in communication and her ability to learn. More along the level of a 5 or 6 year old learning to read, and for some reason not having understood what reading was for or even that it existed before. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/8 "2022-05-02T18:58:14Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > …fascinating. I don’t know. My dog figured out for herself that she could run around the wall to get her retrievable. Granted, according to my own personal dog experience that’s not very common. But then again, Marge knows how to play the bread and butter game; even with a 26’ leash she never walks on the “wrong” side of a tree or sign. And she knows what “go around” means. I’ve never noticed that in any other dog (although I’m sure there are many dogs outside my anecdotal experience who understand it too). ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/9 "2022-05-02T18:59:27Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > What astounds me is Object Permanence. Up to a certain age, babies don’t realize that things they cannot perceive with their senses (such as a toy hidden by a screen) still exist. Then they do. I find it astounding and fascinating. Certainly fascinating, but it’s certainly something a baby would have to learn. Somewhere in that process there must be the development of desires and memories of things they see culminating in that realization that they can look under the blanket for the toy they like to hold. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/10 "2022-05-02T19:01:41Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > What astounds me is Object Permanence. Up to a certain age, babies don’t realize that things they cannot perceive with their senses (such as a toy hidden by a screen) still exist. Then they do. I find it astounding and fascinating. The first baby I spent any substantial time with was my brother’s first kid and I think I screwed up the kid a bit by not understanding what he understood about object permanence. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/11 "2022-05-02T20:29:49Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > And she knows what “go around” means. I’ve never noticed that in any other dog (although I’m sure there are many dogs outside my anecdotal experience who understand it too). One of our dogs knew “around”…he was awesome with it. So much easier than trying to untangle a dog and a tree! ---
**Author:** ![Folacin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/folacin/32/3195_2.png) [@Folacin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folacin)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/12 "2022-05-02T20:55:43Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > Semi Hijack > > What astounds me is Object Permanence. Up to a certain age, babies don’t realize that things they cannot perceive with their senses (such as a toy hidden by a screen) still exist. Semi Hijack hijack: Read a sci-fi short story about a group of researchers who used technology to mess with a chimp: if it couldn’t see something, it went away; some classes of objects (in particular a ball IIRC) were always holograms, so it could see but not touch. After some period of time, they introduced a real ball into the room. The chimp swatted at it, hit it and freaked out. Then it swatted it again and its hand passed through it: the chimp’s view of reality was stronger then the observers. Problems ensue, resolution occurs. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/13 "2022-05-02T21:19:44Z")
Semi hijack (cute kitten variety). Love this video of a kitten discovering his back feet: > ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/14 "2022-05-02T21:59:51Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Certainly fascinating, but it’s certainly something a baby would have to learn. The fact that almost all humans achieve object permanence makes it all the more astounding to me. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/15 "2022-05-02T22:27:58Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > The fact that almost all humans achieve object permanence makes it all the more astounding to me Don’t you think the reality of object permanence helps? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/16 "2022-05-02T22:47:07Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > > [@DocCathode](#): > > > > …fascinating.⁢ > > I don’t know. My dog figured out for herself that she could run around the wall to get her retrievable. Granted, according to my own personal dog experience that’s not very common. But then again, Marge knows how to play the bread and butter game; even with a 26’ leash she never walks on the “wrong” side of a tree or sign. And she knows what “go around” means. I’ve never noticed that in any other dog (although I’m sure there are many dogs outside my anecdotal experience who understand it too).⁢ I don’t see that as a disagreement. It just shows that a dog may (eventually) have a better grasp on object permanence than extremely young humans. Though it’s also possible your dog didn’t so much learn object permanence as learn that sometimes “going around” makes things that “disappear” come back. Similarly, she learned that walking on the other side of a tree or sign with her leash led to her getting tangled up, and thus stopped doing it. It’s hard to know, due both to the nuances of what “object permanence” actually means, let alone how we can test for these nuances. You can’t just ask your dog to tell you her thought processes. And even children tend to forget a lot of that stuff by the time they learn language. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/17 "2022-05-02T22:47:27Z")
Once when our son was a baby, my husband was holding him in front of a mirror. I came up behind them and our son realized I was there because he saw me in the mirror. My husband said, “He’s figured out how mirrors work!” ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2022, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/18 "2022-05-03T00:04:33Z")
I’ve had cats that understood this, and others that didn’t; I could tell, because the ones who didn’t register object permanence would stop looking for an object if they batted it out of sight, and vice versa. We realized my older niece had some concept of numbers when she was 8 months old, when my brother (her father) said, “Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy!” while she was in her exersaucer, and she bounced 3 times. He later said that once, twice, and 4 times, and at that age, she only got it up to the number 3. It was quite a milestone to us, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2022, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/19 "2022-05-03T02:55:33Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I’ve had cats that understood this, and others that didn’t; I could tell, because the ones who didn’t register object permanence would stop looking for an object if they batted it out of sight, and vice versa. Our cat Hailey definitely recognized object permanence. Every week or so, she’d yell at Mom. "Mah _mooooouse!_ It’s underneath the _coooooouch!_ Someone get me mah _moooooooouse!"_ ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2022, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826/20 "2022-05-03T06:31:39Z")
I recall the discussion about an animal psychology experiment, where they were testing persistence of memory in young animals. they’d show a kitten or a baby monkey a treat, put it behind a panel, and see how long it kept reaching for it. Someone wondered about humans, so they showed a young child a candy then put it in a bag and distracted him with questions. after a few minutes the kid says “you’re just trying to make me forget about the candy, aren’t you?” It seems to me there’s more of an evolution of cognition? Babies hear a word and it is regularly associated with an object - _mama_ when mama is present or shows up, _rattle_ when the rattle gets waved around or handed to them. They then learn to associate the word with the object, realize when they make the noise, the result is usually the object. The same for actions. “go to bed”, " eat", “sit” etc. So the question is - would there be an “aha” moment, or a gradual realization that the association means the word applies to the object or action, due to repetition of association of word and experience? Isn’t that what we do with dogs, with “sit” or “stay”? Presumably the next step, which allegedly Koko the Gorilla had gotten to, was to put multiple words together to make a sentence. “Mama sit”. “eat cookie”. Or then realization that the words can conjure up the result, rather than just describe or associate… Yell “mama” and mama appears. Say “potty” and you get put on the potty. Then the baby builds progressive complexity - “mama eat cookie”. It seems like a progression of steps. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/babies-helen-keller-moment/963826.md?page=2)