Peekaboo is a game played over the world, crossing language and cultural barriers. Why is it so universal? Perhaps because it’s such a powerful learning tool.
躲躲猫游戏风行世界各地，跨越语言和文化障碍，为何它如此普遍？也许因为它是一种强大的学习工具。
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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