The New York Times had an op-ed piece Saturday highlighting the latest research on babies' cognitive skills.

Psychology professor and researcher Alison Gopnik details several studies showing that babies can be surprisingly rational little beings. Here's one:

"Last year, Fei Xu and Vashti Garcia at the University of British Columbia proved that babies could understand probabilities. Eight-month-old babies were shown a box full of mixed-up Ping-Pong balls: mostly white but with some red ones mixed in. The babies were more surprised, and looked longer and more intently at the experimenter when four red balls and one white ball out of the box — a possible, yet improbable outcome — than when four white balls and a red one were produced."

She goes on to outline what sorts of implications these studies have for early learning programs, and gives her conclusions on what sorts of things that babies really need — and don't need — in order to learn.