Babies Can Learn Words as Early as 10 Months

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Thursday March 23, 2006 @03:12AM from the babytalk dept.

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.'"

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The language instinct by CRCulver · 2006-03-23 03:18 · Score: 0, Redundant

If anyone is interested in how infants learn language, I'd recommend Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct , which is an elegant presentation for laymen of the theories behind "universal grammar" and language change. I read it about a month ago and was blown away.