Scientists Found that Toddlers are Smarter than We Think

Study shows that toddlers or kids between one to three years of age can determine how to use simple tools without being taught.

Human brains are so unique that they can learn to design and use tools through imitation and learning. Scientists found that such skills are innate to young children.

The study is done by a team led by Eva Reindl, a professor at the University of Birmingham's School of Psychology. They created 12 tests for 24 girls and 26 boys, as reported by Star 2.

They let each child to play alone and use an object in a different way to achieve a specific goal. This is the same test done to chimpanzees and other great apes that human share 98.8 percent of DNA.

"The idea was to provide children with the raw material necessary to solve the task," says Claudio Tennie, a Birmingham research fellow. "We told the children the goal, but we never mentioned using the tool."

One of the tasks is using wet stick to collect polystyrene beads and place it in a box. Most apes use twigs into nest in order to get ants for snacks. Another task had the toddlers retrieve an adhesive label inside a covered box by perforating the cover with a stick.

The toddlers frequently figured out the tricks for 11 out of 12 tasks although some of them failed to execute their plan. Only one child was able to crack a plastic nut using a clay hammer to get its contents, which is similar to food-gathering behavior that is quite rare among apes.

But how would parents deal with toddlers who are starting to make their own decisions? It  could be frustrating, according to Parents.com, but these are signs of positive developments.

"Kids this age see themselves as separate beings from their parents, free to make their own decisions," says Tovah Klein, Ph.D., author of "How Toddlers Thrive."