"Infants seem to perceive reliable adults as capable of rational action, whose novel, unfamiliar behaviour is worth imitating," the researchers said. "In contrast, the same behaviour performed by a previously unreliable adult is interpreted as irrational or inefficient, thus not worthy of imitating."
When a woman finds herself in a situation where she is discouraged, harassed, or unwelcome to breastfeed her baby in public, she summons The Milk Truck. The truck arrives to the location of the woman in need and provides her with a shelter for feeding her baby. The woman feeds her child, the shopkeeper who harassed her feels like a dweeb, and the truck does what it does best - creates a spectacle. (Which is, incidently, the very thing that the shopkeeper thought he was trying to avoid. Alas, some people have to learn the hard way.)
Psychologists from SUNY and Clark University put participants through the daft trial of trying to do maths problems while listening to a range of six sounds, including a screeching saw on wood, machine noise, a baby crying, motherese and whining, for a whole minute each. Weirdly, the whining sample actually came from an adult, as child actors could not “act out a sustained whining bout”. Previous research has shown adult and child whining to be similar enough to enable this substitution.
The study subjected both men and women, parents and non-parents, to the tests, who were rewarded for their troubles with either M&Ms or toy shop vouchers, depending on their childrearing experience.
After having looked at the maths results, the psychologists found that while all “attachment vocalisations” — meaning motherese, crying or whining — caused greater distraction than silence to the participants, a minute of whining resulted in a greater number of mistakes than machine noise or motherese. Furthermore, both parents and non-parents were affected similarly by whining.
Immediately afterward, the young participants (who were seated on caregivers’ laps) were shown side-by-side images of two paintings — one by each artist. Experimenters observed how much time they spent gazing at each.
Those who had been looking at Monets preferred the Picasso. This was not a surprise; it was something different and interesting. But those who had been looking at Picassos also focused on the Picasso, suggesting “a spontaneous preference” for his work overrode the appeal of novelty.
“This preference appeared to be highly robust,” the researchers write, “and was observed (in follow-up experiments) even in the absence of very obvious artistic features such as bold colors, sharp contrasts, and the presence of figurative object-like elements.”
For Ernie....cut a slit towards the bottom for his mouth. Roll up a fruit roll up tightly and then cut part of that for the nose. Cut a small piece for his tongue. Cut a mini marshmallow in half for his eyes. Cut a small raisin for the pupil on the eyes. Cut more of the raisins in half for his hair. Cut the reserved clementine peel for his ears.
For Bert...cut the reserved clementine peel for his nose. Cut the banana peel for his ears. Cut a mini marshmallow for his eyes. Cut a small raisin for the pupil on the eyes. Cut a slit for his mouth. Cut a small piece of fruit roll up for his tongue. Use 2 or 3 raisins for his eye brows. Cut raisins in half for his hair.
The device even produces a small amount of white noise to give any unexpected guest the impression they are speaking to someone inside the house on an intercom system.
The invention, which uses an inbuilt SIM card and existing mobile-phone technology, would also allow homeowners to give instructions to drivers making deliveries at their property.
"Children can build with or against gravity," says Wines, adding that the child's ability to impact the basic architecture of the play area by building on the wall is a large part of the appeal. "Everything a child builds becomes an integral part of the play-space architecture until a new construction is made," she says.
