Stress Harms Infants Learning Flexibility

Children barely a year old learn differently when under stress, a newly publishe
d study suggests, becoming less flexible and creative. Although the study used a
small sample and a fairly artificial learning set-up, the work adds to evidence
that stressful environments favor repetitive learning over creativity.
Stressful situations are known to make adults act more habitually, holding onto
familiar choices even when alternatives would servethem better.Sabine Seehagenof Ru
hrUniversityBochum wanted to see whether the same applies for young children. Natu
rally, there are ethical limits on how stressful a lab environment can be made f
or young subjects, but even a situation children encounter often was potent enou
gh.
The stressed infants were separated from their parents and familiar toys and were
introduced to a strange person and toy. They were then shown two buttons that li
t up and made noises when pushed. After being shown that both buttons worked, ac
cess to one button was blocked by a screen, leading the children to push the oth
er repeatedly. Eventually the second button became available again, but neither
button worked.
A control group got the same buttons, but had played with a parent and their fav
orite toys beforehand, not a stranger.
The levels of cortisol,a stress hormone, were notably higher in those who interac
ted with the stranger, and this groups showed other signs of stress, such as cry
ing longer. Previous studies have produced inconsistent results as to whether in
fants have the same cortisol response to short-term psychological stress as seen
in adults.
Seehagens more novel finding, reported in the journalPNAS, is that the stressed ch
ildren continued to push the button they were familiar with, despite it no longe
r producing the desired result. More relaxed children, on the other hand, were m
uch more likely to experiment with the button they didn t know, once they establ
ished the other one didnt. For the first twenty seconds the two groups behavior
was quite similar, but subsequently the unstressed infants tried changing button
s, while the stressed ones just kept pushing the one they were used to.
The paper notes, Infants in the stress condition did not engage to a lesser degre
e with the buttons during the test nor learn the actions generally more slowly t
han did infants in the no-stress condition. Thus, the effect of stress on infant
s behavior was highly specific.
On its own the experiment s power was quite limited, with only 26 infants involv
ed. However, it adds to existing evidence that stressful environments discourage
flexible learning. Old style teaching methods where children were encouraged to
fear their teachers, or fellow pupils, may have been effective for the rigid ro
te learning favored at the time, but apparently dont fit well with a world in whi
ch children need to learn to experiment.
While in this case Seehagens findings suggest that infants learning behavior resem
bles that of adults, she made headlines earlier this year with the finding that
babies were more likely to remember information if they sleep immediately afterw
ard,a situation less well understood in adults.