By Robin Lloyd, LiveScience Senior Editor
posted: 24 May 2007 02:00 pm ET

Babies might seem a bit dim in their first six months of life, but researchers are getting smarter about what babies know, and the results are surprising.

The word “infant” comes from the Latin, meaning “unable to speak,” but babies are building the foundations for babbling and language before they are born, responding to muffled sounds that travel through amniotic fluid.

Soon after birth, infants are keen and sophisticated generalists, capable of seeing details in the world that are visible to some other animals but invisible to adults, older children and even slightly older infants.

Recently, scientists have learned the following:

More . . .