Word: infant
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...first two years, the human infant displays almost none of its potential. Besides being helpless, babies also seem singularly dumb, and consistently lose intelligence contests when pitted against chimpanzees of the same age. Nothing in the child's limited repertory of action suggests the truly incredible skills that time and experience will hone...
Nonetheless, Psychologist Jerome S. Bruner believes that they must be there, that the full splendor of intelligence is part of the human birthright. Everything the infant needs-to master a tongue, to coax new music from strings, to find undiscovered stars-is already embedded in his nervous system. To test this premise, Harvard's Center for Cognitive Studies has been conducting a series of unusual experiments on the human baby. The studies are based on Bruner's conviction that the infant is "a complicated programming system" and that a great deal of research on the child has presumed...
Precision Tool. Instead of zeroing in on the infant mind, which is almost impossible to test, Bruner has concentrated on the hand. This remarkable instrument, so ineffectual at birth, rapidly develops into a precision tool. By the fourth week, most babies will grasp anything their fingers touch. Bruner has devised a series of experiments calculated to throw light not on what the baby's hand can do, but on how the baby discovers the ability...
FINALLY, the Jensenites might make their most important contribution if they could somehow join with Earl Schaefer of the National Institutes of Health and others at the Universities of Florida, Western Michigan, etc., who are fastening on early infant stimulation and teaching as the key to agility on standardized tests. (The problem of course may be in getting the Schaeferites to join with the Jensenites given the Klan types who have embraced the latter as their own.) Schaefer has already published some fine results of efforts with black children...
Society has often had doubts about intermarriage between the generations. The Talmud warns that "the Lord will not pardon him" who marries his daughter to an old man or takes a wife for his infant son. Literature abounds with bawdy cautionary tales describing the jealous geriatric husband and his ripe, relentless bride. For all the sniggers, though, older men have historically married much younger women. Given the hazards of childbearing until 50 or 60 years ago, it was not unusual for a man to bury one or two young wives. In those days, death provided the variety now offered...