It turns out that moms have been right all along – your baby is a little genius. Despite the word “infant” meaning “unable to speak” in Latin, babies are actually laying the groundwork for language development even before they are born. They can respond to muffled sounds in the womb and start building the skills needed for babbling.
Incredibly, as soon as they are born, infants have an impressive ability to notice and understand details that adults and even older children cannot. They can pick out their native language from a foreign one within a few days of being born. By 4 or 5 months old, they can lip read and match faces on silent videos to specific sounds. Infants are also able to recognize and differentiate between the consonants and vowels of all languages, a skill that many adults struggle with.
But it doesn’t stop there. Researchers have found that babies as young as 6 months old can tell the difference between two monkey faces that would appear identical to older individuals. They can even match the unique calls that monkeys make with pictures of their faces. Furthermore, infants have a natural knack for understanding rhythm and can differentiate between the beats of their own culture and others.
An astonishing discovery from this research is that a 4-month-old baby can determine whether someone is speaking in their native language or not, simply by watching a silent movie of their speech. Unfortunately, this ability fades by 8 months of age, unless the child grows up in a bilingual environment.
It is clear that infants have an incredible ability to process language and make connections beyond just hearing or seeing words. They can relate words to sensory experiences, such as the feel and smell of a rose, as well as the visual cues of a person speaking. This research shows that even infants can recognize languages solely by looking at someone’s face.
These findings contribute to the growing evidence that infants start off as “universal perceivers” capable of learning any language, but eventually become specialists in their own native tongue within the first year of life. It’s truly fascinating to see the development of language skills in such young individuals.
SOURCE: MSNBC
