Baby’s first words are a huge milestone in a child's development. It is one of those things that parents always remember. However, when a baby says his or her first words, it is not actually the beginning of the language skills development. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh found that babies can actually understand combinations of words even before they have said their first word.
Babies can already process combinations of words and phrases even before they uttered their own first words. Image credit: Tiffany Bailey via Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0)
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UK’s and Israel’s linguists used a series of different tests to assess 36 infants’ language learning behaviour. Those were relatively simple experiments – tests were designed to assess babies’ attention while hearing recorded adult speech. Scientists were looking into how babies react to multiword combinations of three-word sequences that are often used in conversations with babies. In the centre of these tests there was a method called central fixation, which basically assesses infants’ looking behaviour in response to sounds. Researchers found that 11-12 month old babies can already process multiword phrases.
Scientists compared how babies respond to different three-word combinations. They wanted to see if there is a difference in reaction when babies hear common phrases like “clap your hands” and less common ones like “take your hands”. Fixation times were longer when babies heard recordings of more common phrases – this pattern was observed in the majority of babies participating in this study. Essentially, this means that while babies are still not speaking words, they are already learning phrases. Recognition and understanding comes before actually using the language.
This is the first study to show that infants can pick up and understand multiword sequences before they can talk. Dr Barbora Skarabela, one of the authors of the study, said: “Previous research has shown that young infants recognise many common words. But this is the first study that shows that infants extract and store more than just single words from everyday speech. This suggests that when children learn language, they build on linguistic units of varying sizes, including multiword sequences, and not just single words as we often assume.”
But these findings do not only concern infants – they may also explain how people learn languages in general. Scientists believe that babies' ability to begin processing phrases before knowing how to speak explains why adults learning a second language rarely reach native-like proficiency in the way they string words together.
Talking is one of the most important human abilities. Our survival depends on communication, which is why babies learn to talk very early in their development. However, we still know very little about it, but we hope that research like this will improve our understanding of how humans learn to process and use speech.
Source: University of Edinburgh