They may seem to be running around causing havoc, defying and distressing their parents with little understanding of their actions, but according to a new study, that’s not necessarily the case. Researchers at the University of Washington found that toddlers as young as 15 months were able to pick up on anger “using visual and social cues” and used that understanding to help “guide their own behavior.”

“In the experiment, 150 toddlers at 15 months of age – an even mix of boys and girls – sat on their parents’ laps and watched as an experimenter sat at a table across from them and demonstrated how to use a few different toys.” The video is one example:

In other cases, the emoter turns their back or leaves the room right after acting angry and the toddler eagerly grabbed the beads. In many of the cases when the emoter stayed in the room, the toddler hesitated, “waiting about four seconds on average if they did reach out”, but were “less likely to imitate the actions of the experimenter. The parents filled out a questionnaire to assess their toddlers impulsivity and found that the higher a toddler scored, the more likely the toddler was to do “forbidden actions” as an “anger-prone adult” watched them.

The researchers found the toddlers were largely able to regulate their behavior and “linked the toddlers’ impulsive tendencies with their tendency to ignore other people’s anger, suggesting as early indicator for children who may become less willing to abide by rules.” The researchers acknowledged that they did not take into account whether some of the toddlers had been desensitized to violence and anger by watching TV or watching their parents argue.

The video is compelling and their hypotheses seem correct, but I still wonder if chance and third variables outweigh their findings. Desensitization to violence has become much more prevalent in younger generations, so I think a study separating the toddlers into groups according to exposure to violence would yield more credible results. Although I found the video interesting, the results don’t surprise me that much. It is during this time in a child’s life that they begin to pick up visual and social cues. However, it still raises questions about when exactly social conditioning does begin to occur. Also, commentators of the video say a major flaw was that the experimenter didn’t let the toddler play with the beads before the emoter came in to find out if the toddler was in fact interested in the beads to begin with. It seemed odd to me that the experimenter and the emoter used fake voices and as the study points out, toddlers are very perceptive to their environments, so the fake voices may have had some influence on the toddler’s action or inaction.

The video was definitely entertaining and although the results didn’t surprise me that much, it does help reinforce a toddlers capability of making individual decisions according to outside influences.