Fun and learning at the baby lab

Babies: Their Wonderful World airs on Choice TV (channel 12 on Freeview or SKY channel 24) at 8.30pm on Thursday, December 6. Helen Brown reviews the first episode.

The big watercooler moment came when three toddlers allowed regular access to smartphones were pitted against three “non-tech users” to see which group had better hand-eye coordination.

The six participants — aged 18-24 months — were asked to draw straight lines with crayons. Defying fears that phone and tablet use is corroding our children’s fine motor skills, the techie kids outperformed their rivals, with crisp and confident lines — which might be expected as they are attuned to life in 2D. But they were more surprisingly advanced with the 3D dexterity required for the construction test. While the nontechies stacked an average of five wooden blocks, screen-keen Madison erected an extraordinary nine-block skyscraper.

In the first episode, Dr Guddi Singh explored the evolution of personality. Using small sample groups of toddlers, she showed how humans appear to be born with one of three basic temperaments: excitable, calm or cautious.

At the “baby lab” — a barn conversion filled with international psychologists, neurologists and some sceptical-looking infants — Singh tested the ways in which nurture shapes those natures. It was no surprise to hear that babies who hear a wide vocabulary tend to develop one of their own. Or that the impulse controlling regions of the brain are far from functional at this age.

It was more unsettling to see toddlers from Caucasian backgrounds choose to play with fellow Caucasian playmates over Asian children (even when they played more nicely). But it was important to learn that increased exposure to ethnic diversity can erode this inbuilt bias. We also saw first-hand how old myths about gender roles are being exploded as Singh’s guinea pigs handed toy vacuum cleaners to dolly daddies.