Can we guess from the first months of a human being’s life whether they will be intelligent once they reach adulthood? Futurism responds in the affirmative by relaying a study according to which subjecting babies aged 7 months to cognitive tests makes it possible to largely anticipate the level of reflection of which they will be capable when they are thirty.
This theory, which will not fail to fuel the debate on nature and nurture, is based on a scientific study carried out by a team from the University of Colorado and published by the journal PNAS, specializing in cognitive sciences. However, its authors want the results to be taken with caution: “We certainly do not want to insinuate that cognition is fixed from the age of 7 months”declares Daniel Gustavson, assistant research professor at the University’s Institute of Behavioral Genetics, in a press release.
The interest of chatter
“The idea that a very simple test taken in early childhood could help predict the results of a very complex cognitive test taken thirty years later is exciting”nevertheless recognizes the researcher, whose team relied in particular on data from a study carried out on twins in Colorado since 1985. In this state, around 1,000 children are followed since their birth in order to study the impact of genes and the environment on their development.
Based on previous research, general cognitive abilities don’t change much after the age of around 8, but Daniel Gustavson’s team wanted to determine whether this was also true from a much younger age. To do this, she examined several parameters, focusing in particular on babies’ babbling, likely to provide information on their ability to concentrate and express themselves.
The scientists concluded that two parameters – the attraction to novelty and the ability to orient towards tasks – strongly predicted children’s cognitive abilities as adults. Fortunately, everything is not fixed at this point: the human brain is far too complex for its functioning to be summarized in this way. We know, for example, that Covid-19 seems to have had an impact on babies born during the pandemic – and that overall, the times don’t help either.
The study of monozygotic twins notably allowed the research team to determine that 22% of the variance in cognitive abilities in adulthood was linked to genetic influences present in children aged 3 or younger. But members of the research team also discovered that environmental influences observed in a child aged 1 or 2 could explain 10% of the variability in cognitive tests in adulthood.
