Babies Can Learn Words as Early as 10 Months

linguizic writes "According to Scientific American Online: '10 month olds can learn to associate words with objects in their environment when given interesting enough stimuli. A two-year-old can quickly link an object--whether a flashy rattle or a boring latch--to a word. Even a one-year-old can follow a parent's gaze to an object and match it with a word being spoken. But although anecdotal evidence seems to show that babies younger than one year can learn words, it remains unclear whether they are in fact mastering language. Now a new study reveals that 10-month-old infants can link words and objects, but only if the object is already interesting to them.'"

Comments

Number of parents surprised by this: 0

[PFI_Optix]

Seriously, do these people have kids themselves?

My son is 18 months. He's got a vocabulary somewhere around 50 words and strings together short sentences. "I got out" was the first sentence we heard him say, maybe two months ago.

At 10 months, he had actually named his two favorite toys (Gah and Meh) and would look up if you said "light". If you said "tractor" he would want to go outside, because that's where the tractor is at his grandfather's house. He wasn't talking then (he barely is now) but it was clear that he understood words.

Re:No surprise there...

[jheath314]

A bit off topic, but it's sort of sad to read where Sidis went from there...

His academic career flamed out early, mostly due to his inability to cope with other people (students, administrators, etc.) who didn't match his stellar IQ. In an age when theories like quantum mechanics and relativity were turning the world upside down, he contributed surprisingly little of substance to any field of intellectual endeavor. Instead he withdrew into himself, becoming neurotically obsessed with, of all things, streetcar transfers. While unquestionably intelligent, his tremendous gifts were mostly wasted.

When I was in university, I noticed that there were two types of students who did well: those who were very smart, and those who were not so bright, but worked very hard. While I often envied the first group, I always respected the second group more. When it comes to life outside the university, I'm willing to bet that, as a whole, the hard workers will end up doing better than the naturally gifted ones.