Infants may practise words in their minds
19 July FOX
Months before they say their first real “mama” or “dada,” babies are
practicing those words in their heads, new research suggests.
Brain areas associated with speech motor planning light up in
7-month-old babies, even though little ones don't usually talk until
they are 1 year old. Finding activation in motor areas of the brain when
infants are simply listening is significant, because it means the baby
brain is engaged in trying to talk back right from the start, and
suggests that 7-month-olds’ brains are already trying to figure out how
to make the right movements that will produce words,” lead author
Patricia Kuhl, who is the co-director of the University of Washington's
Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, said in a statement.
Babies start developing language very early.
For instance, researchers have found that infants as little as 6
months can understand words.By 7 months old, babies can distinguish
different speech sounds, such as whether someone is talking English or
Swahili.But by their first birthday, babies focus mainly on the sounds
they hear most often. Scientists don't yet have a clear picture of how
the brain transitions from listening to everything, to focusing on a
native language.
To understand more about this transition, Kuhl and her colleagues
looked at 57 babies, who were either 7-months or 11- to 12-months-old,
in a non-invasive brain scanner. The researchers played the sounds of
syllables such as “da” from both English, the babies’ native language,
and Spanish, a foreign one, while measuring the little ones’ brain
activation.
Several areas associated with planning the movements of speech lit
up, including Broca's area, the cerebellum and an auditory region called
the superior temporal gyrus.
The babies were likely practicing speech movement months before they
were able to say their first words, the researchers said.At 7 months,
these motor planning regions activated equally for both foreign and
familiar sounds, but older babies showed more activation when they heard
sounds that were unfamiliar.
The team hypothesized that the older babies were, in essence, working
harder to predict which movements they would need to do to make
unfamiliar sounds. The researchers said they suspect these
motor-planning regions of the brain may play a role in infants’
transition to focusing on native language.
The new results underscore how important it is to talk to babies,
even if they can't talk back.Hearing us talk exercises the action areas
of infants’ brains, going beyond what we thought happens when we talk to
them,” Kuhl said.
“Infants’ brains are preparing them to act on the world by practicing
how to speak before they actually say a word. |