婴幼儿为何喜欢玩躲躲猫

 

One of us hides our eyes and then slowly reveals them. This causes peals¹ of laughter from a baby, which causes us to laugh in turn. Then we do it again. And again.

 

Peekaboo never gets old. 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 chuckled² a lot!" she confirms by text message) and so on back through the generations. We are all born with unique personalities³, in unique situations and with unique genes⁴. So why is it that babies across the world are constantly rediscovering peekaboo for themselves?

 

Babies don't read books, and they don't know that many people, so the surprising durability⁵ and cultural universality of peekaboo is perhaps a clue that it taps into something fundamental in their minds. No mere⁶ habit or fashion, the game can help show us the foundations on which adult human thought is built.

 

An early theory of why babies enjoy peekaboo is that they are surprised when things come back after being out of sight. 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. They are born into a buzzing confusion, and gradually have to learn to make sense of what is happening around them. 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.

 

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. And of course those two years are prime peekaboo time. 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.

 

Maybe evolution fixed⁷ it so that babies enjoy peekaboo for its own sake, since it proved useful in cognitive⁸ development, but I doubt it. Something deeper than mere education is going on.

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