As a child I mean.
I work in early years. Yes babies have a great understanding of body language and facial expression long before they can talk to communicate.
Young children are actually far more intelligent than most people give them credit for. Just because they can’t communicate it the same language as us yet doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re doing.
If they didn’t understand body language, how would they bond with people? And people bond back with them? Not to be insulting, but it’s like with pets. We can build bonds with them because we learnt to understand each others body language even though we don’t speak the same language
It’s amazing how people still deny evolution. The wild relatives of Guinea Pigs are silent only making noise when one is totally isolated from the group and needs to find it. The domesticated ones are loud making a variety of different noises for different needs and emotions.
The species evolved towards us because we are evolved to respond to “help me” noises from small cute furry things. Why? Because babies that were not responding and communicating ended up dead.
Yes babies have a great understanding of body language and facial expression long before they can talk to communicate.
I knew it!
My wife is a social worker and she said the opposite and we had like a big quarel over it. I was 99% sure I was right, but I since she’s a social worker, she’s more the authority on this matter than I am (I’m an engineer) and I thought I’d double check, just to be sure.
Now I’m gonna rub this in her face 😁.
Kids who are blind from birth generally still learn to speak, so (visual) body language recognition can’t be 100% prerequisite.
I’m autistic so for me it was speech first. Didn’t really learn to read body language until my teenage years and it was something I had to actively force myself to learn. Still can’t really do it all that well though to be honest.
I have a niece that is not yet 2 and I can tell you she reads body language and practices it along with speaking. Her body language is a lot better then her spoken language by far.
It is, it really is. My son acted the same way when he was 2 (he’s 4 now)… so, I really have no idea why my wife said the opposite was true.
I just wanted to confirm what I already knew without giving a biased question (leading to one answer or another).
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Depends what you mean by body language. I think that most can recognise basic facial expressions like happiness and fear before they can talk, and understand things like pointing and reaching for things to express interest etc.
I mean, I’ve known how to speak for a long time now, but I still haven’t developed the ability to read body language…
