Babies that are just a few months old will learn more from nursery rhymes and other sing-song talk than standard baby babble chat, according to a new study looking at the foundation of language in infants.
That’s because their brains learn to process the rhythm of speech first – which helps them start to differentiate between words – long before they can distinguish between the different sounds that make up words, which appears to kick in at about seven months.
The study used brain imaging to test young babies’ reactions to rhythmic information (stressing different syllables and variations in tone) compared to phonetic information (the smallest sound elements of speech, like the sounds ‘pa’ versus ‘ba’).
According to the team of researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK and the University of Dublin in Ireland, the brain scans revealed newborns aren’t ready to fully process phonetic information for the first few months of their lives.
Bron: sciencealert.com
David Nield
5 januari 2024
