There is nothing more infectious than the giggles of a baby tickled while playing with a new rattle or teddy. But today, one-year-old Hannah Brandt's chuckles are prompted by a grown-up gadget not usually found in a toy box - a £550 iPhone 3GS.
She's playing applications invented by two men to help harried parents distract fractious children.
"Who hasn't been on a train journey with a baby who becomes restless, crying and wriggling in the confined space while other passengers glare," says Will Adams, an animator with the Glasgow-based mobile games company Me and the Giants.
He had just this scenario in mind when he approached the games designer Dave Sapien last year and asked him to customise a mobile phone so his son, Lorcán, now aged three, could play with it.
"Like most children who see their mums and dads constantly talking on or tapping the keys of their mobiles, my son is fascinated by phones, so I thought it would be a good idea to turn a disused phone into a toy," says Adams.
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It was Sapien who suggested designing a range of apps that could be played by babies with their parents. The Baby Look apps were released in the Apple Store earlier this month for 59p each.
"I thought it was a great idea right from the outset, as people always have a phone on them and this market has not yet been exploited. Nobody else is designing games for 0-18-month-olds," says Sapien.
Aware that eyebrows would be raised at the idea of computer games for babies, Adams and Sapien approached Glasgow University to help them come up with games that would stimulate and educate as well as entertain.
Dr Rob Jenkins, a cognitive psychologist whose research interests include face perception and social interaction, was closely involved in tailoring the apps to infants' needs and abilities. Initially, he was sceptical. "My first reaction was, 'My God, video games for the under-18 months, what a terrible idea.' But once I spoke to Will and Dave, it became clear that's not what they wanted," he says. "It's not Sonic the Hedgehog getting his claws into young vulnerable minds; it's about using technology to mediate face- to-face interaction between the carer and the infant. Once we got talking along those lines, I really warmed to it."
Adams says: "We don't expect parents to give their kids their iPhones all the time - just now and then to get out of a tricky situation."
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Jenkins is keen to stress the baby apps are not designed as electronic babysitters, allowing the adult carer to ignore the child while it is being amused by a gadget. "We didn't want to encourage parallel play, where the baby is playing with the phone by itself while the adult reads a newspaper. We designed the games so they can be played only by both adult and child," he says.
Hannah's father was at first unsure how much she would get out of playing a computer game - and about allowing her to play with an expensive iPhone. But once Sapien demonstrated how sturdy it was by whacking it on the side of a coffee table, he relaxed and soon became engrossed in her reactions. "She's loving it," he says. "She likes pressing the buttons on my mobile and my laptops, and she has her own plastic toy mobile, but she's even more delighted with this. I was worried in case she dropped it, but it seems quite solid.
"This would be great when we're travelling. We fly to Sweden to see my family, and it's hard to keep her amused in a tight space like that, and this would be ideal as an iPhone is so portable. I'm quite relaxed about the idea of apps for babies - it's just another form of media, like books or toys."
The baby apps are designed scientifically with a baby's abilities and needs in mind. Jenkins says: "The problem with a lot of toys and games is that they are geared to appeal to the parent, who is doing the purchasing, who is trying to think on behalf of the child. But if you know about, for example, infant vision, then it's clear that a lot of these products are just not pushing the right buttons. The infant mind is not the same as the adult mind, or even the childhood mind that we remember."
He adds: "When a child comes into the world, it can't see very well. Young babies find it hard to pick up on detail. Swirling colours and complicated patterns are lost on an infant, which explains why the five Baby Look apps - Tickle, Shapes, Faces, Peekaboo and Patterns - look so dull to the adult eye. They are black and white with deceptively simple face shapes drawn in thick lines.
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"Black and white is usually a no-no if you're trying to market to the toy sector, but it gives the maximum contrast possible between the object and the background, so it breaks through the fog of infant vision. If you had a jazzy complicated display on an iPhone, it would not be detectable to such a young eye. They have to be bold images and uncluttered displays."
Three of the apps - Tickle, Faces and Peekaboo - feature faces that change their expression when you touch the screen. The adult can show the baby how touching the screen in different places in the latter app makes a face appear and say "peekaboo"; rubbing the face on Tickle makes it laugh; while Faces features the universal facial expressions of joy, sadness, anger, surprise, fear and disgust.
"One of first things babies recognise is the human face," says Jenkins. "Experiments show a baby as young as nine minutes old prefers faces over other objects. But we also wanted to encourage social interaction. The fact that faces win out with babies is interpreted as evidence they are ready to interact."
All the games are multi-sensory, involving touch, vision and sound, and the faces have childlike proportions to appeal to babies.
With all this scientific input, Adams insists the apps are not just a way to amuse your baby, but also an educational tool. "We are interested in stealth education - games that are entertaining first and foremost, but that educate and inform as a byproduct," he says.
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However, Frank Furedi, a sociologist and the author of Paranoid Parenting, says: "Why not just play peekaboo with your baby? Most parents have the intellectual and emotional resources to play with their kids without a technological prop. It's often the most unexpected thing - a piece of paper, playing peekaboo - that turns into a source of pleasure for a child and parent. You don't want to distract attention from the relationship being forged through discovering these things by buying in ready-made games.
"Today there is an obsession with turning children's play and their toys into worthy developmental education. Kids need to just play and mess around. They don't need scientists innovating toys for them."
Adams realises the notion of iPhone games for babies will attract controversy, but he warns against over-reaction. "It's not so different from the pretend mobile phones and other electronic toys already available for kids," he says. "From a child's perspective, we are obsessed with our phones, so it's natural for a child to be the same way with them."
Child's play: the games
Baby Look! Tickle Tickle the happy face with your finger to make it laugh. Babies can find the high-contrast face fascinating and the laughter infectious.
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Baby Look! Shapes This is aimed at children aged around 18 months, and designed with interaction between career and child in mind. The adult draws shapes with the child by simply touching the screen. The shape names are called out by a child's voice.
Baby Look! Faces Using touch gestures, the adult changes the expressions on the faces and guides the child through six "universal" facial expressions: happy, sad, angry, surprised, scared and disgusted, complete with accompanying noises.
Baby Look! Patterns Featuring high-contrast patterns that will intrigue young eyes, the app cycles through 19 patterns specially developed to interest a baby. Touch the screen to move on to the next pattern.
Baby Look! Peek-a-Boo This keeps the baby guessing where the smiley face is going to pop up next. The adult or child touches the screen where they want the face to appear.