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May 31, 2007

"Language. I loved it. And for a long time I would think of myself, of my whole body, as an ear." --Maya Angelou

What Babies Know & We Don't

Babies might seem a bit dim in their first six months of life, but researchers are getting smarter about what babies know, and the results are surprising. Soon after birth, infants are keen and sophisticated generalists, capable of seeing details in the world that are visible to some other animals but invisible to adults, older children and even slightly older infants. Here are just a few of the most recent findings: At a few days old, infants can pick out their native tongue from a foreign one. At 4 or 5 months, infants can lip read, matching faces on silent videos to "ee" and "ah" sounds. Infants can recognize the consonants and vowels of all languages on Earth, and they can hear the difference between foreign language sounds that elude most adults.