Investigator(s)
| Submitter |
Nidup Dorji Faculty of Nursing and Public Health, Khesar Gyalpo University of Medical Sciences of Bhutan Nidup Dorji 
|
| Principal Investigator |
Nidup Dorji Khesar Gyalpo University of Medical Sciences of Bhutan Nidup Dorji
|
| Co-Investigator(s) |
Wangchuk Wangchuk Khesar Gyalpo University of Medical Sciences of Bhutan Wangchuk Wangchuk
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| Co-Investigator(s) |
Gustaf Gredebäck Upsalla University, Sweden Gustaf Gredebäck
|
Title(s) and abstract
| Scientific title | What Babies Know 2.0 |
| Public title | What Babies Know 2.0 |
| Background | The origins of human cognition remain a central debate in developmental psychology. Experience-expectant theories propose that infants are born with innate cognitive capacities that emerge with minimal environmental input, whereas experience-dependent theories argue that cognitive abilities develop through interactions with caregivers, the environment, and culture. Despite extensive research, the relative contributions of biology and experience to early cognition remain unresolved. Recent work by Elizabeth Spelke has revitalized this debate through the Core Knowledge framework, which suggests that infants possess universal, evolutionarily derived systems for understanding objects, numbers, geometry, actions, goals, and social relationships. These foundational capacities are believed to support later learning and reasoning. In contrast, neuroconstructivist, social-interactionist, and ecological perspectives contend that such abilities emerge through experience, cultural transmission, and parent–child interactions. A major limitation of existing research is its reliance on small samples drawn predominantly from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) populations. This limits variation in developmental environments and constrains our ability to determine whether early cognitive capacities are universal or culturally shaped. Addressing this gap requires large-scale, cross-cultural studies that integrate experimental methods with measures of infants’ everyday experiences. This project examines six foundational domains of cognition: object representation, numerical reasoning, geometric processing, and understanding of referential actions, joint attention, and prosocial behaviour. Building on recent findings demonstrating similar gaze-following abilities among infants from Bhutan, Sweden, Uganda, and Zimbabwe despite diverse caregiving environments, this study will investigate whether other foundational cognitive capacities exhibit comparable universality and provide comprehensive behavioural assessment to date of the human developmental origin. |
| Objectives | 1. Assess six foundational cognitive capacities; three in the physical domain (object representation, approximate number, and geometric forms) and three in the social domain (referential actions, goal understanding, and pro-sociality); in infants aged eight months across five countries and six sites spanning a broad range of human conditions and cultural contexts. 2. Determine whether these capacities are experience-expectant; universal and independent of individual and cultural variation, or experience-dependent; sensitive to the quality of parent-child interactions, cultural values, environmental adversity, and parental investment in child development. |
| Study Methods | This study will employ a cross-sectional design to assess six foundational cognitive capacities, determine if the capacities are experience expectant or dependent, and examine the developmental trajectories across the eight months infants in Bhutan with exposure to multiple faiths, range of economic conditions, value systems, and parenting cultures oriented toward either autonomy or relatedness. |
| Expected outcomes and use of results | We hypothesize that physical cognition, and basic social cognition (gaze following) is so fundamental that it develops early in life (before 4 months of age) and that it is similar across cultures, regardless of experiences. More advanced social cognition is hypothesized to be influenced by the quality of parent-child interactions and parental investment in child development resulting in an experience-dependent cognitive processes to accommodate this need for flexibility. At the same time, we have been wrong in the past and data to broadly assess these two alternatives is currently missing. Another important dimension of this project is its focus on developmental trajectories. One possibility is that infants initially rely on experience-expectant processes that bootstrap development, with later cognitive development (within the first year) becoming more open to experience as they gain agency and social skills. Alternatively, consistent with Heckman's model (35), early development may be highly experience-dependent, with greater plasticity and benefits from intervention occurring earlier in life. This dependency may decrease over time, when infants have sufficient experience for basic cognitive capacities to emerge, as seen in studies of face perception. It is also possible that the level of experience dependency does not change over the first year of life, consistent with the hypothesis stated above. As this research will examine whether other foundational cognitive capacities display similar universality, it is envisaged that this study will provide a comprehensive behavioral test to date the early ontogenetic origins of human cognition. |
| Keywords | Infant cognition; Experience-dependent development; Experience-expectant development; Early childhood development; Prosocial understanding; Bhutan |
Research Details
| Student research | No |
| Start Date | 01-Sep-2026 |
| End Date | 01-May-2027 |
| Key Implementing Institution | Khesar Gyalpo University of Medical Sciences |
| Multi-country research | No |
| Nationwide research | No |
| Bhutan, Bhutan, Bhutan, Bhutan | |
| Research Domain(s) | Maternal, Reproductive and Child Health |
| Research field(s) | Other (primary caregiver to child) Child Health |
| Involves human subjects | Yes |
| Other (8 months infants and primary caregiver including mother and father) | |
| Data Collection | Primary data |
| Proposal reviewed by other Committee | No |