It’s not a secret that scientists are always learning something new about babies. The word infant comes from Latin and means ‘unable to speak.’ But new research shows that although babies can’t talk, they are able to process sounds, language and meaning from even inside the womb.
Among the findings that are amazing scientists:
*By just a few days, babies can distinguish their own tongue from a foreign language.
*By 4 or 5 months. . .babies can lip read.
*Babies can recognize the vowels and consonants of every language and they can make distinctions which elude many adults.
They also have a propensity towards seeing details in pictures and hearing minute details in sounds, that again–elude many adults.
(For a full description of the findings, check here)
The latest finding suggests that infants use lip reading to distinguish between their native tongue and a foreign language. . .but by eight months the skill disappears. Unless the infant is growing up in a bilingual home where the skill is necessary. By around 6 months, all these acute discriminatory skills start to decline, apparently because they are no longer needed.
Baby Geniuses?
Remember the movie Baby Geniuses? The premise of the movie was that babies are actually geniuses and then at some point they ‘cross over’ and lose their intelligence. It turns out that the premise may not be far off.
However, the research raises interesting questions about what it means to be intelligent when you’re describing a young child. Even the label ‘gifted’ can now come into question. Is it in fact, that all healthy babies are gifted and then at some point lose their gifts? Do we as adults cause them to lose their gifts?
I suspect that ‘losing’ their ability to discriminate foreign languages is part of normal development and there is nothing to be done to prevent it. (Unless of course you and your spouse speak different languages!) Just as a baby stops using the rooting reflex when he’s old enough to communicate in other ways, I suspect that the ability to perceive all these things also falls by the wayside naturally.
It just goes to show though–those babies are pretty intelligent!
Related Articles:
Teaching Your Baby a Foreign Language
The Inner Workings of Your Baby’s Mind: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3