Four-Month-Old Babies Can Learn How Sounds Are Made, Even From Languages They’ve Never Heard
Babies are natural learners, constantly picking up clues about the world around them. A new study has found that babies as young as four months old can learn how sounds are made, even from languages they’ve never heard.
This challenges the long-held belief that babies only start recognizing the patterns of their native language between six and 12 months of age.
The discovery also provides an earlier window to help children who might be at risk of speech or language delays.
By their first birthdays, babies are already getting used to the sounds of their native language while losing sensitivity to unfamiliar sounds in a process called perceptual attunement. But in their first six months of life, babies can distinguish sounds from languages they’ve never encountered.
For example, they might be able to tell the differences between contrasts in Hindi or tones in Mandarin that are hard for adult English speakers to detect.
Between six and 12 months, they begin to narrow their focus to the sounds they hear most often. Before this happens, babies as young as four months are already learning about sounds.
They notice how someone’s lips or tongue move to make sounds even though they do not yet understand the spoken language itself.
Researchers tested 34 babies aged four to six months by exposing them to two made-up mini-languages. One language contained words with lip sounds like “b” and “v,” while the other used tongue-tip sounds like “d” and “z.”
Each word was paired with a cartoon image—a jellyfish for lip words and a crab for tongue-tip words. As the corresponding image appeared, a recording of the word was played at the same time.
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Babies cannot express exactly what they are thinking, but they can form associations. The cartoon images helped the researchers see if the babies could link the mini-languages to the correct picture. Once the babies learned the mini-languages and their associated pictures, the researchers mixed things up.
Instead of listening to recordings of the words, they showed the babies silent videos of a person’s face speaking new words from the same mini-languages.
The babies stared much longer at the videos where the speaker’s mouth movements matched the sound pattern they learned earlier.
This suggests they were actively learning the rules of the mini-languages, not just passively listening. The findings have significant implications for early language learning. Babies can start identifying patterns at four months, laying the foundation for learning how to speak later on.
Furthermore, earlier detection of language learning difficulties could help with speech delays, revolutionizing early childhood education and speech therapy. It could really make a big difference.
The details of the full study were published in the journal Developmental Science.
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