On these “trick trials” the babies smiled and laughed less, even though the outcome was more surprising. Videos of the infants were rated by independent observers for how much the babies smiled and laughed. Most of the time the peekaboo game proceeded normally, however on occasion the adult hid and reappeared as a different adult, or hid and reappeared in a different location. Researchers Gerrod Parrott and Henry Gleitman showed this in tests involving a group of six-, seven- and eight-month-olds which sound like more fun than a psychology experiment should be. Peekaboo uses the fundamental structure of all good jokes - surprise, balanced with expectation. Something deeper than mere education is going on. Maybe evolution fixed it so that babies enjoy peekaboo for its own sake, since it proved useful in cognitive development, but I doubt it. Looked at this way, the game isn't just a joke, but helps babies test and re-test a fundamental principle of existence: that things stick around even when you can't see them. And of course those two years are prime peekaboo time. The Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget called this principle 'object permanence' and suggested that babies spent the first two years of their lives working it out. You know that when you hear my voice, I'm usually not far behind, or that when a ball rolls behind a sofa it still exists, but think for a moment how you came by this certainty. They are born into a buzzing confusion, and gradually have to learn to make sense of what is happening around them. This may not sound like a good basis for laughs to you or I, with our adult brains, but to appreciate the joke you have to realise that for a baby, nothing is given. No mere habit or fashion, the game can help show us the foundations on which adult human thought is built.Īn early theory of why babies enjoy peekaboo is that they are surprised when things come back after being out of sight. So why is it that babies across the world are constantly rediscovering peekaboo for themselves?īabies don't read books, and they don't know that many people, so the surprising durability and cultural universality of peekaboo is perhaps a clue that it taps into something fundamental in their minds. We are all born with unique personalities, in unique situations and with unique genes. Not only does my own infant daughter seem happy to do it for hours, but when I was young I played it with my mum ("you chuckled a lot!" she confirms by text message) and so on back through the generations. This causes peals of laughter from a baby, which causes us to laugh in turn. One of us hides our eyes and then slowly reveals them.
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