Babies start to learn the connection between images and real-world objects by the time they are nine-months-old.
"The study should interest any parent or caregiver who has ever read a picture book with an infant," Doctor Jeanne Shinskey, from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway University said in the news release. "For parents and educators, these findings suggest that, well before their first birthdays and their first words, babies are capable of learning about the real world indirectly from picture books, at least those that have very realistic images like photographs."
The research team exposed 30 babies around the age of nine months to a life-sized photo of a toy for one minute. The babies were then given the toy seen in the image as well as a toy they had not been exposed to in any way. The team observed which toy the babies tended to reach for first.
In one condition the team drew the study subject's attention to the two toys and then put them in plastic containers; they kept an eye on which objects held the baby's attention. In another condition the researchers tested the subject's ability to "create a continued mental idea of the target toy by hiding both toys from view, drawing infants' attention to the toys and then placing the toys inside opaque containers," the news release reported.
The team found that when the toys were in clear containers the babies tended to reach for the one that had not been in the picture. This could be because they were more interested in the object that was new and exciting as opposed to the one that had been in the picture. When the toys were placed in opaque containers the babies reached for the toy that had been in the photo, suggesting they had formed a mental image of it.
"These findings show that one brief exposure to a picture of a toy affects infants' actions with the real toy by the time they reach nine-months-old. It also demonstrates that experience with a picture of something can strengthen babies' ideas of an object so they can maintain it after the object disappears - so out of sight is not out of mind," Shinskey said.
