Infants Begin Learning Rules Of Speech At Seven Months

From birth, babies show a preference for the sound of human speech over other sounds. Now, research published in Psychological Science shows that at just seven months, infants are already scanning what is said to them for patterns.

The study presented infants with algebraically constructed sequences of either speech syllables. After familiarizing infants with these sequences, researchers presented them with two new sequences that were consistent with the "grammar" they had already heard and two sequences that were inconsistent with this grammar. For example, if the baby was familiar with ABB patters luch as fe la la, "consistent" sequences would include "ba do do" while an inconsistent sequences would be de de ko (AAB).

Measuring the infants' attention to the various sequences, researchers found that they appeared to recognize the previously learned grammar. Interestingly, the babies' were not able to learn from similar patterns were presented to them in the form of music or animal sounds, but were able to generalize rules to non-human sounds once they had already learned them from speech, suggesting that speech holds a unique quality that not only interests babies, but may also facilitate learning.

Read more: The roots of grammar: New study shows children innately prepared to learn language