
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
MIT researchers have found that babies as young as 15 months can learn to follow this advice. In their study, babies who watched an adult struggle at two different tasks before succeeding tried harder at their own difficult task than babies who saw an adult succeed effortlessly.
In the experiment, the babies first watched an adult perform two tasks: removing a toy frog from a container and removing a key chain from a carabiner. Half saw the adult quickly succeed three times within 30 seconds; the other half saw her struggle for 30 seconds before succeeding.
The experimenter then showed the baby a musical toy with a nonfunctional button that looked as if it should turn the toy on. Out of the baby’s sight, the researcher turned the toy on, using a concealed, functional button, to demonstrate that it played music, and then turned it off and gave it to the baby.
Each baby was allowed two minutes to play with the toy. Those who had seen the experimenter struggle before succeeding pressed the button nearly twice as many times overall as those who saw the adult succeed easily. They also pressed it nearly twice as many times before asking for help or tossing the toy. This suggests that people appear to be able to learn, from an early age, how to make decisions regarding effort allocation.
“There’s some pressure on parents to make everything look easy and not get frustrated in front of their children,” says Laura Schulz, a professor of cognitive science and senior author of the study, which appeared in Science. “This does at least suggest that it may not be a bad thing to show your children that you are working hard to achieve your goals.”
Keep Reading
Most Popular
A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?
Robot vacuum companies say your images are safe, but a sprawling global supply chain for data from our devices creates risk.
A startup says it’s begun releasing particles into the atmosphere, in an effort to tweak the climate
Make Sunsets is already attempting to earn revenue for geoengineering, a move likely to provoke widespread criticism.
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2023
These exclusive satellite images show that Saudi Arabia’s sci-fi megacity is well underway
Weirdly, any recent work on The Line doesn’t show up on Google Maps. But we got the images anyway.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.