What is going on in this baby's mind? If you'd asked people this 30 years ago, most people, including psychologists, would have said that this baby was irrational, illogical, egocentric -- that he couldn't take the perspective of another person or understand cause and effect. In the last 20 years, developmental science has completely overturned that picture. So in some ways, we think that this baby's thinking is like the thinking of the most brilliant scientists.
Que está a suceder na mente desde bebé? Se preguntásemos isto hai 30 anos, a maioría da xente, psicólogos incluidos, diría que este bebé é irracional, ilóxigo, egocéntrico... que non tería en conta a perspectiva doutra persoa ou non entendería un proceso de causa-efecto. Nos últimos 20 anos, a ciencia do desenvolvemento anulou completamente esta teoría. En certo modo, cremos que o pensamento deste bebé é coma o pensamento dos científicos máis destacados.
Let me give you just one example of this. One thing that this baby could be thinking about, that could be going on in his mind, is trying to figure out what's going on in the mind of that other baby. After all, one of the things that's hardest for all of us to do is to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling. And maybe the hardest thing of all is to figure out that what other people think and feel isn't actually exactly like what we think and feel. Anyone who's followed politics can testify to how hard that is for some people to get. We wanted to know if babies and young children could understand this really profound thing about other people. Now the question is: How could we ask them? Babies, after all, can't talk, and if you ask a three year-old to tell you what he thinks, what you'll get is a beautiful stream of consciousness monologue about ponies and birthdays and things like that. So how do we actually ask them the question?
Dareilles un exemplo disto. Unha cousa que podería estar a pensar este bebé, que podería estar a pasar pola súa mente, é tratar de descifrar o que está a ocorrer na mente doutro bebé. Á fin e ó cabo, unha das cousas máis difíciles para todos nós é tratar de descifrar o que outras persoas pensan e senten. E quizais o máis difícil sexa entender que o que outros pensan e senten non é o mesmo que o que nós pensamos e sentimos. Calquera que estea ó tanto da política pode dicir o difícil que lles resulta isto a algunhas persoas. Nós queriamos saber se os bebés e os nenos pequenos podían entender esta idea tan complexa sobre outras persoas. A cuestión é: como podemos preguntarlles? Os bebés non falan, e se lle pedimos a un neno de 3 anos que nos conte o que pensa, só conseguiremos un monólogo de pensamentos sobre ponis, cumpreanos e cousas polo estilo. Como podemos entón preguntarlles?
Well it turns out that the secret was broccoli. What we did -- Betty Rapacholi, who was one of my students, and I -- was actually to give the babies two bowls of food: one bowl of raw broccoli and one bowl of delicious goldfish crackers. Now all of the babies, even in Berkley, like the crackers and don't like the raw broccoli. (Laughter) But then what Betty did was to take a little taste of food from each bowl. And she would act as if she liked it or she didn't. So half the time, she acted as if she liked the crackers and didn't like the broccoli -- just like a baby and any other sane person. But half the time, what she would do is take a little bit of the broccoli and go, "Mmmmm, broccoli. I tasted the broccoli. Mmmmm." And then she would take a little bit of the crackers, and she'd go, "Eww, yuck, crackers. I tasted the crackers. Eww, yuck." So she'd act as if what she wanted was just the opposite of what the babies wanted. We did this with 15 and 18 month-old babies. And then she would simply put her hand out and say, "Can you give me some?"
Resulta que o secreto foi o brócoli. Betty Rapacholi, unha das miñas estudantes, e mais eu, démoslles ós bebés dous pratos con comida: un con brócoli cru e outro con deliciosas galletiñas saladas. A todos os bebés, incluso en Berkeley, lles gustan as galletiñas e non lles gusta o brócoli. (Risos) Despois, o que facía Betty era probar comida dos dous pratos. E facía que lle gustaba ou non o que probaba. A metade das veces, facía que lle gustaban as galletiñas e non o brócoli... como calquera bebé ou persoa normal. Pero a outra metade, collía un pouco de brócoli e dicía "Mmmm, brócoli. Probei o brócoli. Mmmm." E logo collía unhas galletiñas, e dicía "Aj, puaj, galletiñas. Probei as galletiñas. Aj, puaj." É dicir, facía coma se lle gustara o contrario do que lles gustaba ós bebés. Fixemos isto con bebés de 15 e 18 meses. Logo Betty extendía a man e dicía, "Dásme un pouquiño?"
So the question is: What would the baby give her, what they liked or what she liked? And the remarkable thing was that 18 month-old babies, just barely walking and talking, would give her the crackers if she liked the crackers, but they would give her the broccoli if she liked the broccoli. On the other hand, 15 month-olds would stare at her for a long time if she acted as if she liked the broccoli, like they couldn't figure this out. But then after they stared for a long time, they would just give her the crackers, what they thought everybody must like. So there are two really remarkable things about this. The first one is that these little 18 month-old babies have already discovered this really profound fact about human nature, that we don't always want the same thing. And what's more, they felt that they should actually do things to help other people get what they wanted.
A cuestión era: daríanlle os bebés o que lles gustaba a eles ou a ela? O sorprendente foi que os bebés de 18 meses, que acaban de empezar a andar e falar, dábanlle as galletiñas se lle gustaran as galletiñas e o brócoli se lle gustara o brócoli. Por outro lado, os bebés de 15 meses quedábanse fitando para ela se parecía que lle gustara o brócoli, coma se non puidesen entendelo. E despois de mirala durante un rato longo, dábanlle galletiñas, o que pensaban que gustaría a todo o mundo. Polo tanto, hai dous datos reveladores nisto. Por un lado está que os bebés de 18 meses xa teñen descuberto este dato importante da natureza humana: que non todos queremos o mesmo. É mais, entenden que deben actuar para axudar a outras persoas a conseguir o que queiran.
Even more remarkably though, the fact that 15 month-olds didn't do this suggests that these 18 month-olds had learned this deep, profound fact about human nature in the three months from when they were 15 months old. So children both know more and learn more than we ever would have thought. And this is just one of hundreds and hundreds of studies over the last 20 years that's actually demonstrated it.
E máis interesante sen embargo, é que os bebés de 15 meses non fan isto; o que suxire que os nenos de 18 meses aprenderon este dato profundo do ser humán nos 3 meses que os separan dos bebés de 15 meses. Polo tanto, os bebés saben máis e aprenden máis do que pensabamos ata agora. E este é só un dos centos de estudos que se fixeron nos últimos 20 anos demostrando este feito.
The question you might ask though is: Why do children learn so much? And how is it possible for them to learn so much in such a short time? I mean, after all, if you look at babies superficially, they seem pretty useless. And actually in many ways, they're worse than useless, because we have to put so much time and energy into just keeping them alive. But if we turn to evolution for an answer to this puzzle of why we spend so much time taking care of useless babies, it turns out that there's actually an answer. If we look across many, many different species of animals, not just us primates, but also including other mammals, birds, even marsupials like kangaroos and wombats, it turns out that there's a relationship between how long a childhood a species has and how big their brains are compared to their bodies and how smart and flexible they are.
O que se poden preguntar agora é: Por que os nenos aprenden tanto? E como é posible que aprendan tanto en tan pouco tempo? É dicir, a primeira vista, os bebés parecen bastante inútiles. E en moitas ocasións, son peor que inútiles, porque temos que empregar moito tempo e enerxía simplemente en mantelos vivos. Se recurrimos á evolución para buscar resposta a este misterio de por que perdemos tanto tempo coidando a bebés inútiles, resulta que si hai unha resposta Se observamos varias especies distintas, non só outros primates coma nós, senón tamén outros mamífeors, paxaros, incluso marsupiais coma os canguros ou os vombátidos, resulta que hai relación entre a duración da infancia, e o tamaño relativo do cerebro e a intelixencia e flexibilidade da especie.
And sort of the posterbirds for this idea are the birds up there. On one side is a New Caledonian crow. And crows and other corvidae, ravens, rooks and so forth, are incredibly smart birds. They're as smart as chimpanzees in some respects. And this is a bird on the cover of science who's learned how to use a tool to get food. On the other hand, we have our friend the domestic chicken. And chickens and ducks and geese and turkeys are basically as dumb as dumps. So they're very, very good at pecking for grain, and they're not much good at doing anything else. Well it turns out that the babies, the New Caledonian crow babies, are fledglings. They depend on their moms to drop worms in their little open mouths for as long as two years, which is a really long time in the life of a bird. Whereas the chickens are actually mature within a couple of months. So childhood is the reason why the crows end up on the cover of Science and the chickens end up in the soup pot.
Un exemplo disto sacámolo destes paxaros que podedes ver aquí. Por unha banda temos o corvo de Nova Caledonia. Os corvos e outros córvidos, grallas, pegas, etcétera, son paxaros moi intelixentes. En certos sentidos son tan intelixentes coma os chimpancés. E este é un paxaro moi estudado que ten aprendido a usar ferramentas para conseguir comida. Por outra banda, temos á nosa coñecida galiña doméstica. As galiñas, así coma os patos, pavos e gansos, son parvos coma pedras. Son moi moi bos picando gran, pero non son moi bos facendo calquera outra cousa. Resulta que os bebés dos corvos de Nova Caledonia, os pitiños, dependen de que as súas nais lles poñan os vermes na boca ata os dous anos de vida, o que supón bastante tempo na curta vida dun paxaro. Sen embargo, as galiñas son adultas en apenas un par de meses. Por tanto, a infancia é a razón pola que os corvos rematan na portada das revistas científicas mentras que as galiñas rematan no pote da sopa.
There's something about that long childhood that seems to be connected to knowledge and learning. Well what kind of explanation could we have for this? Well some animals, like the chicken, seem to be beautifully suited to doing just one thing very well. So they seem to be beautifully suited to pecking grain in one environment. Other creatures, like the crows, aren't very good at doing anything in particular, but they're extremely good at learning about laws of different environments.
Hai algo nas infancias longas que parece estar relacionado co coñecemento e coa aprendizaxe. Que explicación poderiamos ter para isto? Algúns animais, coma as galiñas, parecen creadas para facer unha cousa moi ben. Así que as galiñas son moi boas picando gran nun entorno concreto. Outras criaturas, coma os corvos, non son especialmente boas facendo nada particular, pero son moi boas aprendendo as normas de distintos entornos.
And of course, we human beings are way out on the end of the distribution like the crows. We have bigger brains relative to our bodies by far than any other animal. We're smarter, we're more flexible, we can learn more, we survive in more different environments, we migrated to cover the world and even go to outer space. And our babies and children are dependent on us for much longer than the babies of any other species. My son is 23. (Laughter) And at least until they're 23, we're still popping those worms into those little open mouths.
E por suposto, nós, os seres humáns estamos moi lonxe nesa distribución. Temos cerebros máis grandes con relación ó noso corpo, moito máis que calquera outro animal. Somo máis intelixentes, máis flexibles, podemos aprender mais, podemos sobrevivir en moitos máis entornos: temos emigrado por todo o planeta e incluso cara o espacio. E os nosos bebés e nenos dependen de nós por moito máis tempo que os bebés doutras especies. O meu fillo ten 23. (Risos) Polo menos ata os 23, seguimos a poñerlles eses vermiños nas súas bocas abertas
All right, why would we see this correlation? Well an idea is that that strategy, that learning strategy, is an extremely powerful, great strategy for getting on in the world, but it has one big disadvantage. And that one big disadvantage is that, until you actually do all that learning, you're going to be helpless. So you don't want to have the mastodon charging at you and be saying to yourself, "A slingshot or maybe a spear might work. Which would actually be better?" You want to know all that before the mastodons actually show up. And the way the evolutions seems to have solved that problem is with a kind of division of labor. So the idea is that we have this early period when we're completely protected. We don't have to do anything. All we have to do is learn. And then as adults, we can take all those things that we learned when we were babies and children and actually put them to work to do things out there in the world.
Moi ben, por que observamos esta correlación? Unha idea é que esa estratexia, a estratexia da aprendizaxe, é unha forma moi poderosa e forte de adentrarse neste mundo. Pero ten unha gran desvantaxe: resulta que ata que se aprende todo, se está indefenso. Non sería bo que nos perseguise un mastodonte e estar a pensar: "Empregarei un tiracroios ou unha lanza? Cal será mellor?" Sería mellor saber todo iso antes de que aparezan os mastodontes. E a forma en que a evolución solucionou este problema foi, parece ser, cunha división do traballo. Por iso temos este periodo de tempo no que estamos totalmente protexidos. Non temos que facer nada. Simplemente aprender. E logo, de adultos, podemos coller iso que aprendemos de bebés e nenos e poñelo en práctica para saírmos polo mundo adiante.
So one way of thinking about it is that babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species. So they're the protected blue sky guys who just have to go out and learn and have good ideas, and we're production and marketing. We have to take all those ideas that we learned when we were children and actually put them to use. Another way of thinking about it is instead of thinking of babies and children as being like defective grownups, we should think about them as being a different developmental stage of the same species -- kind of like caterpillars and butterflies -- except that they're actually the brilliant butterflies who are flitting around the garden and exploring, and we're the caterpillars who are inching along our narrow, grownup, adult path.
Unha forma de pensar nisto é que os bebés e os nenos pequenos son coma o departamento de Investigación e Desenvolvemento da especie humana. Son a xente protexida que investiga, os que só teñen que saír, aprender e ter boas ideas. E nós somos a produción e comercialización. Temos que coller todas esas ideas que aprendemos de nenos e poñelas en práctica. Outra forma de velo é, en lugar de pensar nos bebés e os nenos coma adultos incompletos, pensar neles coma seres nun estado de desenvolvemento distinto da mesma especie; coma os casulos e as bolboretas. Pero os bebés serían as bolboretas que borbolean polo xardín explorando, e nós seriamos os casulos encerrados no noso estreito camiño de adultos.
If this is true, if these babies are designed to learn -- and this evolutionary story would say children are for learning, that's what they're for -- we might expect that they would have really powerful learning mechanisms. And in fact, the baby's brain seems to be the most powerful learning computer on the planet. But real computers are actually getting to be a lot better. And there's been a revolution in our understanding of machine learning recently. And it all depends on the ideas of this guy, the Reverend Thomas Bayes, who was a statistician and mathematician in the 18th century. And essentially what Bayes did was to provide a mathematical way using probability theory to characterize, describe, the way that scientists find out about the world. So what scientists do is they have a hypothesis that they think might be likely to start with. They go out and test it against the evidence. The evidence makes them change that hypothesis. Then they test that new hypothesis and so on and so forth. And what Bayes showed was a mathematical way that you could do that. And that mathematics is at the core of the best machine learning programs that we have now. And some 10 years ago, I suggested that babies might be doing the same thing.
Se isto é certo, se os bebés están deseñados para aprender, e esta historia da evolución nos mostra que así é, que os nenos están para aprender, podemos esperar que sexan uns mecanismos de aprendizaxe bastante poderosos. E de feito, o cerebro dun bebé parece ser o ordenador de aprendizaxe máis poderoso do planeta. Aínda que os verdadeiros ordenadores están a mellorar moito. Está a haber unha revolución na nosa forma de entender as máquinas de aprendizaxe. E todo a causa das ideas deste home, o reverendo Thomas Bayes, un estatístico e matemático do século XVIII. Básicamente, Bayes proporcionou un procedemento matemático que empregaba a teoría da probabilidade para caracterizar e describir a forma na que os científicos descubrían cousas do mundo. O que os científicos fan é plantexar unha hipótese, algo co que poder comezar. Logo evalúan esa hipótese con probas. As probas fanlles cambiar a hipótese, que volven a evaluar con novas probas, e así sucesivamente. O que Bayes mostrou foi un procedemenento matemático que podía facer iso. E as matemáticas son a base dos mellores programas de aprendizaxe que temos hoxe en día. Hai dez anos, suxerín que os bebés debían estar a facer o mesmo.
So if you want to know what's going on underneath those beautiful brown eyes, I think it actually looks something like this. This is Reverend Bayes's notebook. So I think those babies are actually making complicated calculations with conditional probabilities that they're revising to figure out how the world works. All right, now that might seem like an even taller order to actually demonstrate. Because after all, if you ask even grownups about statistics, they look extremely stupid. How could it be that children are doing statistics?
Se queremos saber o que está a pasar baixo estes preciosos olliños marróns, penso que é algo moi parecido ó atopado nas notas do reverendo Bayes. Penso que os bebés están a facer cálculos moi complicados con probabilidades condicionadas que revisan e así descobren como funciona o mundo. Ben, isto é aínda máis dificil de demostrar. Se preguntamos a un adulto sobre estatística, pódese sentir bastante estúpido. Como é posible que os nenos fagan estatísticas?
So to test this we used a machine that we have called the Blicket Detector. This is a box that lights up and plays music when you put some things on it and not others. And using this very simple machine, my lab and others have done dozens of studies showing just how good babies are at learning about the world. Let me mention just one that we did with Tumar Kushner, my student. If I showed you this detector, you would be likely to think to begin with that the way to make the detector go would be to put a block on top of the detector. But actually, this detector works in a bit of a strange way. Because if you wave a block over the top of the detector, something you wouldn't ever think of to begin with, the detector will actually activate two out of three times. Whereas, if you do the likely thing, put the block on the detector, it will only activate two out of six times. So the unlikely hypothesis actually has stronger evidence. It looks as if the waving is a more effective strategy than the other strategy. So we did just this; we gave four year-olds this pattern of evidence, and we just asked them to make it go. And sure enough, the four year-olds used the evidence to wave the object on top of the detector.
Para probar isto, empregamos unha máquina que demos en chamar o Detector Blicket. É unha caixa que se acende e soa cando se poñen encima dela uns obxectos determinados. Empregando esta máquina tan simple, no meu laboratorio, e tamén noutros, se realizaron ducias de estudos sobre o bos que son os nenos aprendendo sobre o mundo. Mostrarei simplemente un que fixemos con Tumar Kushner, un dos meus estudantes. Se vos mostrase este detector probablemente empezariades por pensar que a forma de activalo é colocar un bloque sobre o detector. Pero o caso é que o detector funciona dunha forma un tanto estraña. Se se abanea un bloque enriba do detector, algo no que non pensariamos nun principio, o detector se activa dúas de cada tres veces. Namentres que se colocamos o bloque enriba, o que sería o lóxico, só se activa dúas de cada seis veces. Polo tanto, a hipótese menos probable ten probas máis evidentes. Parece que a estratexia de abanear o obxecto é mais efectiva que a outra. Así que explicamos estes datos ós nenos de catro anos e pedémoslles que o intentasen. E con seguridade, os nenos de catro anos empregaron os datos e abanearon o obxecto enriba do detector.
Now there are two things that are really interesting about this. The first one is, again, remember, these are four year-olds. They're just learning how to count. But unconsciously, they're doing these quite complicated calculations that will give them a conditional probability measure. And the other interesting thing is that they're using that evidence to get to an idea, get to a hypothesis about the world, that seems very unlikely to begin with. And in studies we've just been doing in my lab, similar studies, we've show that four year-olds are actually better at finding out an unlikely hypothesis than adults are when we give them exactly the same task. So in these circumstances, the children are using statistics to find out about the world, but after all, scientists also do experiments, and we wanted to see if children are doing experiments. When children do experiments we call it "getting into everything" or else "playing."
Hai dous datos interesantes neste feito. A primeira, recordade que son nenos de catro anos, que están aprendendo a contar; pero inconscientemente xa están a facer cálculos complexos que lles dan unha medida de probabilidades condicionadas. O segundo dato interesante é que están a usar as probas para chegar a unha idea, a unha hipótese sobre o mundo, que parece algo pouco probable ó principio. En estudos que realizamos no laboratorio, outros similares, demostramos que estes nenos de catro anos son mellores descubrindo hipóteses pouco probables ca os adultos, dada a mesma tarefa. Nestas circunstancias, os nenos fan estatísticas para desvelar cousas sobre o mundo. Pero os científicos experimentan, despois de todo, e queriamos ver se os nenos experimentaban tamén. É o que normalmente chamamos "meterse en todo" ou "xogar".
And there's been a bunch of interesting studies recently that have shown this playing around is really a kind of experimental research program. Here's one from Cristine Legare's lab. What Cristine did was use our Blicket Detectors. And what she did was show children that yellow ones made it go and red ones didn't, and then she showed them an anomaly. And what you'll see is that this little boy will go through five hypotheses in the space of two minutes.
Ten habido moitos estudos interesantes ultimamente que mostraron que estes xogos son coma unha especie de programa de investigación experimental. Mostramos un do laboratorio de Cristine Legare. Cristine empregou de novo Detectores Blicket. Mostrou aos nenos que os bloques amarelos facíano funcionar e os vermellos non, ademais de mostrarlles unha anomalía. O que veremos agora é a este rapaz formulando 5 hipóteses en 2 minutos de tempo.
(Video) Boy: How about this? Same as the other side.
Neno: E así? Neno: Igual que no outro lado.
Alison Gopnik: Okay, so his first hypothesis has just been falsified.
Alison: Ben, a primeira hipótese rexéitase.
(Laughter)
Neno: Nada (Risos)
Boy: This one lighted up, and this one nothing.
Neno: Este acéndese, pero este non.
AG: Okay, he's got his experimental notebook out.
Alison: Empeza a describir a experimentación.
Boy: What's making this light up. (Laughter) I don't know.
Neno: Por que este si que se encende? (Risos) Neno: Non o entendo.
AG: Every scientist will recognize that expression of despair.
Alison: Os científicos han recoñecer esa cara de desesperación.
(Laughter)
(Risos)
Boy: Oh, it's because this needs to be like this, and this needs to be like this.
Neno: Oh, é porque este ten que estar así, e este ten que estar así.
AG: Okay, hypothesis two.
Alison: Lista, hipótese 2.
Boy: That's why. Oh.
Neno: Así ten que ser. Neno: Oh... non pode ser.
(Laughter)
(Risos)
AG: Now this is his next idea. He told the experimenter to do this, to try putting it out onto the other location. Not working either.
Alison: Agora vén a seguinte idea. Pediulle á investigadora que tentase poñelo enriba do outro. Tampouco funcionou.
Boy: Oh, because the light goes only to here, not here. Oh, the bottom of this box has electricity in here, but this doesn't have electricity.
Neno: Oh, é porque a luz só vai ata aquí, non ata aquí. Baixo esta caixa hai electricidade, pero esta non ten.
AG: Okay, that's a fourth hypothesis.
Alison: Ben, esa sería a cuarta hipótese.
Boy: It's lighting up. So when you put four. So you put four on this one to make it light up and two on this one to make it light up.
Neno: Agora si se acende! Se pos catro bloques. Se pos catro bloques neste, acéndese e dous para que se encenda o outro.
AG: Okay,there's his fifth hypothesis.
Alison: Ben, esa é a quinta hipótese.
Now that is a particularly -- that is a particularly adorable and articulate little boy, but what Cristine discovered is this is actually quite typical. If you look at the way children play, when you ask them to explain something, what they really do is do a series of experiments. This is actually pretty typical of four year-olds.
Este neno é... é un neno moi riquiño e elocuente, pero Cristine descubriu que é un neno moi típico. Se observamos como xogan os nenos, se lles pedimos que expliquen algo, o que fan é experimentar. Moi típico dos nenos de 4 anos.
Well, what's it like to be this kind of creature? What's it like to be one of these brilliant butterflies who can test five hypotheses in two minutes? Well, if you go back to those psychologists and philosophers, a lot of them have said that babies and young children were barely conscious if they were conscious at all. And I think just the opposite is true. I think babies and children are actually more conscious than we are as adults. Now here's what we know about how adult consciousness works. And adults' attention and consciousness look kind of like a spotlight. So what happens for adults is we decide that something's relevant or important, we should pay attention to it. Our consciousness of that thing that we're attending to becomes extremely bright and vivid, and everything else sort of goes dark. And we even know something about the way the brain does this.
Ben, e que se sente sendo este tipo de criatura? Que se sente sendo unha destas bolboretas que poden probar 5 hipóteses en 2 minutos? Se volvemos ás teoría de psicólogos e filósofos, moitas din que os bebés e os nenos apenas son conscientes, ou incluso que non o son en absoluto. Pero eu penso que é o contrario. Penso que os bebés e os nenos son máis conscientes ca os adultos. Isto é o que sabemos sobre como funciona a conciencia adulta. A conciencia e atención dun adulto parécese a un foco. O que ocorre nos adultos é que cando decidimos que algo é importante ou relevante, prestámoslle atención. A conciencia niso no que nos fixamos vólvese relucente e intensa, mentras que o resto case que se apaga. Tamén sabemos como ocorre isto no cerebro.
So what happens when we pay attention is that the prefrontal cortex, the sort of executive part of our brains, sends a signal that makes a little part of our brain much more flexible, more plastic, better at learning, and shuts down activity in all the rest of our brains. So we have a very focused, purpose-driven kind of attention. If we look at babies and young children, we see something very different. I think babies and young children seem to have more of a lantern of consciousness than a spotlight of consciousness. So babies and young children are very bad at narrowing down to just one thing. But they're very good at taking in lots of information from lots of different sources at once. And if you actually look in their brains, you see that they're flooded with these neurotransmitters that are really good at inducing learning and plasticity, and the inhibitory parts haven't come on yet. So when we say that babies and young children are bad at paying attention, what we really mean is that they're bad at not paying attention. So they're bad at getting rid of all the interesting things that could tell them something and just looking at the thing that's important. That's the kind of attention, the kind of consciousness, that we might expect from those butterflies who are designed to learn.
Cando prestamos atención a algo, a parte frontal do cerebro, a parte que executa as accións, manda un sinal que fai que unha pequena parte do cerebro se flexibilice, se volva máis plástica, mellor para aprender; e apaga a actividade no resto do cerebro. Temos así unha atención moi centrada, orientada ó propósito. Se observamos os bebés e nenos, vemos algo moi distinto. Penso que os bebés e os nenos parecen ter unha conciencia máis parecida a unha lanterna ca a un foco. Ós bebés e ós nenos cústalles moito limitar a atención a unha soa cousa. Pero dáselles moi ben ter en conta moita información de moitas fontes á vez. E se observamos os seus cerebros, o que vemos é que están asolagados de neurotransmisores que inducen á aprendizaxe e á plasticidade, e que a inhibición aínda non se leva a cabo. Por iso cando dicimos que os bebés e os nenos teñen problemas para prestar atención, o que realmente significa é que lles custa non prestar atención. Cústalles desfacerse das cousas interesantes que lles poderían dicir algo por só mirar ó que é importante. Ese é o tipo de atención, o tipo de conciencia que debemos esperar desas bolboretas que están deseñadas para aprender.
Well if we want to think about a way of getting a taste of that kind of baby consciousness as adults, I think the best thing is think about cases where we're put in a new situation that we've never been in before -- when we fall in love with someone new, or when we're in a new city for the first time. And what happens then is not that our consciousness contracts, it expands, so that those three days in Paris seem to be more full of consciousness and experience than all the months of being a walking, talking, faculty meeting-attending zombie back home. And by the way, that coffee, that wonderful coffee you've been drinking downstairs, actually mimics the effect of those baby neurotransmitters. So what's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double-espressos. (Laughter) That's a fantastic way to be, but it does tend to leave you waking up crying at three o'clock in the morning.
Se queremos pensar nunha forma de sentir ese tipo de conciencia infantil coma adultos, penso que a mellor forma é pensar sobre casos nos que estamos ante unha situación nova na que non estivemos nunca; cada vez que nos enamoramos de alguén, ou cando vamos a unha cidade por primeira vez. Neses casos a conciencia non se contrae, senón que se expande, por iso parece que en 3 días en Paris hai máis conciencia e experiencias que en todos os meses de volta na casa, andando, falando, indo a clases coma zombis. Por certo, ese café, ese magnífico café que tomamos abaixo, en realidade imita o efecto dos neurotransmisores dos bebés. Así que, cómo é ser un bebé? É coma estar namorado, en París, por primeira vez, despois de tomarse 3 expresos dobres. (Risos) Unha sensación marabillosa, pero que adoita espertarnos chorando ás 3 da mañá.
(Laughter)
(Risos)
Now it's good to be a grownup. I don't want to say too much about how wonderful babies are. It's good to be a grownup. We can do things like tie our shoelaces and cross the street by ourselves. And it makes sense that we put a lot of effort into making babies think like adults do. But if what we want is to be like those butterflies, to have open-mindedness, open learning, imagination, creativity, innovation, maybe at least some of the time we should be getting the adults to start thinking more like children.
Pero está ben ser adulto. Non quero dicir demasiado sobre o magníficos que son os bebés. Está ben ser adulto. Podemos facer cousas coma atarnos os zapatos ou cruzar a rúa sós. E ten sentido que poñamos moito esforzo en facer que os bebés pensen coma os adultos. Pero se o que queremos é ser coma esas bolboretas, ter a mente aberta, estar abertos á aprendizaxe, imaxinación, creatividade, innovación... quizais, polo menos ás veces, debamos facer que os adultos pensen un pouco coma os nenos.
(Applause)
(Aplausos)