Babies are good judges of character long before they learn to speak, according to a new study at Yale University. Infants as young as six months preferred characters which helped rather than hindered others in a simple puppet show. "This is the very first experiment in anywhere near this age that shows babies develop preferences for individuals based on their actions," says Karen Wynn at Yale, who led the study. Wynn and her colleagues studied the reactions of infants to a sketch in which a brightly colored wooden block with goggly eyes attempts to climb up a hill, with other blocks either helping or hindering progress. Researchers say the findings reveal that humans begin making social evaluations far earlier than previously thought.
