If you accept this view, you will be discouraged from having intimate dialog with your newborn and be deprived of the many gifts your baby is prepared to give you. You and your baby are linked, not alien from each other. Your performance is a duet, not a solo. Babies watch intently for changes in your face and can instantly mimic expressions of sadness, happiness, and surprise. Babies listen with incredible precision to adult speech.
Films show that they lead as well as respond in dialog with parents.
If babies were lost in their own world, they would not be so good at analyzing and responding to sounds. They will stop eating, even when hungry, to listen to something interesting. If they hear other babies crying, they will usually be moved to cry with them. If they hear a recording of their own cry, they may suddenly stop crying-an indication that they recognize themselves. One authority writes that infants discover they have a mind and others have minds when they are nine months old.