The “semi-words” babies utter often mesmerize parents and give away tens of meanings to the jocund listener. Two research papers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shed new light on how infants learn to perceive and talk.
The Baby’s Learning Curve
The learning curve for the infants involves two distinct but related processes – speech perception and speech production. Speech perception involves learning to interpret sounds and noises; speech production involves learning to respond by generating sounds and syllables. In scientific terms speech perception is generally more understood than speech production. Recent scientific research provides us glimpses of the mechanisms of speech production by infants.
The Sound Baby Makes Reflects Native Language
Scientists have long been known that baby’s expressive learning depends on the linguistic ambience of the parents. For example, simple vowels 2- to 20-week-old babies utter, babbling sounds 8- to 10-month-old babies make and the vocal expressions 9-month-old babies make all have the characteristics of parents’ native language. The “aahs” and “oohs” the babies utter reflect the language they hear from parents.
Why Does the Baby Look at Your Eyes?
How does your baby pick up those sounds and syllables that specifically reflect your native language? Do babies follow a specific pattern of learning? Scientists have known that babies between birth and 6-month of age usually pay attention to the eyes of the talker. As adults we look straight at the eyes of the other person when we hear he or she talks. We do so because our ability to associate faces and voices and to match and integrate the auditory and visual attributes are well developed. The babies have no such ability, then why are they looking at the eyes? Scientists have also noticed that babies shift their focus to the mouth after 6-month of age. This pattern of shifting focus from eye to mouth may have clues to enlighten us about the learning pattern of infants.
Shifting Between Eyes and Mouth
Drs. David Lewkowicz and Amy Hansen-Tift of Florida Atlantic University discovered that the babies between 4- and 8-month of age pick up audiovisual cues from their parents’ mouth. They showed the babies videos of a female talking in either native or non-native language. While listening to the talker, 4-month-old babies looked more at the eyes, 6-month-old babies looked equally at the eyes and mouth, and 8-month-old babies shifted their complete focus to the mouth of the female talker. The 12-month-old babies then shifted their focus back to the eyes of the female talker when she was speaking in the native language. However, when she was speaking in non-native language, 12-month-old babies remained focused on the mouth.
Watch What You Say to Your 6-month Old Baby
The scientists explain this behavior as a linear learning curve practiced by babies as they respond to cues from their surroundings. Because babies usually begin to make babbling sounds when they are 6-month-old, it is at this stage they start to focus on the mouth of the talker to imitate the syllables. By the time they reach 12-month-old, the babies have already developed enough expertise to adapt to the cues of their native language, so they shift focus on to eyes. However, when it comes to non-native language they still needs to learn, so they go back to the mouth again.
If your 6-month-old looks straight at your mouth when you talk, understand that your baby is learning to imitate you. In another 3 or 4 months your baby will start uttering those words back at you, albeit incompletely. In the homes of multilingual families the infant may be struggling to pick up one cue or other to learn in a linear fashion.
Your Babies Know What You Say
In another research paper published in the same journal Drs. Elika Bergelson and Daniel Swingley of the University of Pennsylvania argues that infant learning need not necessarily take a linear path. They found that infants of 6-month-old infants might already know the meaning of some nouns that are commonly used in the household. They presented 6- to 9-month-old babies with sets of pictures to view while their parent named a picture in each set. The babies directed their gaze to the named pictures, indicating their understanding of spoken words. These studies suggest that young babies at the age of 6 months onwards are capable of understanding simple names and ordin-ary words through daily experience with language. These new discoveries indicate that, contrary to prevailing beliefs, babies can already grasp and learn simple words and referential intentions of adults at 6 months of age. The next time when you talk to your 6-month old baby, be careful about what you say, because the baby is actually beginning to understand those words.
References:
David J. Lewkowicz and Amy M. Hansen-Tift, Infants deploy selective attention to the mouth of a talking face when learning speech, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol: 109, 1431-1436
Elika Bergelson and Daniel Swingley, At 6-9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Early edition
