Washington, Aug 8 (Inditop.com) Babies receptive to new information at the age of six months and one year also excel in academics as adults, according to a new study.
The study, led by Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) psychologist Joseph Fagan, found that intelligent babies do become more intelligent as they grow.
The psychologist developed the Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence over 20 years ago. The test measures the response infants have to pictures of novel objects.
The infant test works by pairing two pictures together for a set period of time. A researcher watches the length of time an infant looks at the pictures.
Then one of these pictures is paired with a new image and again the time the infant focuses on the new and old images is recorded. Infants generally spend about 60 percent of the time looking at new images.
Fagan and co-investigators Cynthia Holland from Cuyahoga Community College and undergraduate student Karyn Wheeler revisited 61 young adults, who had taken the Fagan Test as babies in their first year of life.
They also looked at their first IQ tests at the age of three and compared them with their scores at 21 years old.
They discovered an association with intelligence between this very early ability to process information and IQ during their young adult years.
Researchers say that attention to novelty “tells us that intelligence is continuous from infancy to adulthood” and “underscore the importance of information processing as a means for studying intelligence”.
They added that this knowledge may help researchers also understand how genetics and environment can influence intelligence, said a CWRU release.
These findings were published in Intelligence.
