(1) Do babies dream of bottles of milk, their parents’ faces, or a favorite rattle? (2) Scientists debate whether they dream at
all. (3) Recent studies indicate that, contrary to popular belief, babies lack the cognitive ability to dream because their brains are too busy on other important tasks.
(4) So-called experts have long assumed that infants dream because they spend a large portion of their sleep time in REM sleep, the sleep stage in which older children and adults dream. (5) For example, Dr. Charles P. Pollak, who directs the Center for Sleep Medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, asserts that because babies undeniably have REM sleep, it’s only logical to infer that they dream. (6) Of course, he adds, there is no way to know what babies dream about, because they cannot tell anyone.
(7) Granted, child psychologist David Foulkes argues that babies use REM sleep for other purposes. (8) Although babies can do little more than eat, sleep, and cry, their brains are incredibly busy building neural pathways, processing what they have learned, and working on language development. (9) In fact, a recent study proves that newborns are even capable of learning in their sleep. (10) Scientists played musical tones to sleeping newborns just before blowing a puff of air onto their eyelids. (11) Within 15 minutes, according to brain scans, the babies had learned to tense their eyelids when they heard the tone.
(12) Not only are babies’ brains too busy during REM sleep to dream, says Foulkes, but they also lack the ability to imagine things visually, a skill necessary for dreaming. (13) In fact, according to his research, children don’t start dreaming until they are four or five years old, and even then, the dreams lack the vivid details and structured story lines that characterize adult dreams.
(14) For example, sometimes parents claim that they have witnessed their toddlers having terrible nightmares, which can be more frightening for the parents than for the toddlers. (15) Furthermore, it is only when children develop strong self-awareness, typically around age seven or eight, that they begin to place themselves in their dreams and have dreams with clear narratives. (16) Babies, Foulkes argues, are nowhere near that level of cognitive development.
The writer is considering adding the following sentence before sentence 1.
Parents have long wondered what goes on in their infants’ minds as the children slumber through the majority of the day.
Should the writer make this addition?
Yes, because the sentence presents an intriguing question that focuses the audience on the topic of the passage.
A. Yes, because the sentence hints at a discussion later in the passage of a brain study that sought to discover what babies dream of.
B. Yes, because the sentence engages the audience with a personal anecdote about the parents of a newborn.
C. No, because the sentence makes a generalization that is impossible to prove without a survey of parents.
D. No, because the sentence contradicts evidence presented later in the passage about babies’ sleep habits.
