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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.'"
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. Last time I spoke with a 10 month old, it became clear to me that sub one-year olds have yet to master language. OR, they have mastered some language concepts, but have yet to develop a worthwhile attention span to convey this mastery. -C
From the Slashdot: .A two-year-old can quickly link an
object.... Yeah, but at what age can a baby levarage
development patterns? No baby is going to be much use until he
(she) knows the difference between a Singleton and a Factory.
Those who know about teaching young babies (6 mos and up) sign language already know that babies have a capacity to understand some grammar.
At least it's nice to have study that shows this.
The real study now is to develop an effective system for teaching babies communication.
And I won't have him using that sissy baby "OO" stuff, either. He'll start where his old man did, on IBM/360 systems, writing assembler on punch-cards writing drivers for DASD systems.
And he'll like it if he knows what's good for him.
I don't find this surprising at all. My friend's daughter started learning sign language before 10 months. At her first birthday she constructed a novel and meaningful sentence in sign. She, apparently, was tired and overstimulated and started telling people to "Please bye-bye."
Anyway, at or about 10 months she could request several of her favorite foods, and was pretty disciplined about saying please and thank you! She could also identify a helicopter by its sound and give her variation on the sign for helicopter.
-Peter
I'd had no idea dogs could be trained to do that but since a) they had seven or eight of them and b) all the owners were teaching them to say the same thing ("Love you Mama"), it must be something people commonly know. Does everyone know this? A Google search mostly turns up page after page of links to videos on blocked or NSFW sites.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
My son is 6 months old and he certainly understands 'mama', you say that and he looks around for her. Don't know if he understands 'dada' or 'father dear' yet....
We think he also understands 'baba' or 'bottle', as you say that and he expects food......
my niece was seven months old when she spoke her first words. Her first word was "This" and it was my fault. She always would point at an object she wanted. I'd go over to the object and say "this?" so many toys and bottles became known as "this". Her second word was "no" because most of the objects she wanted were not age appropriate. She took her first steps in her tenth month - and was running around autonomously by her first birthday. In fact, she helped cut the cake and hand out pieces. "No" became a real problem because she got to the point where she would unbuckle herself from the stroller and take off. Pigtails flying, we'd yell, "Come back!". She'd yell, "NO!!!!"
un burrito me trampeó.
William Sidis could read at 18 months, and taught himself Latin at 3, Greek at 4, and had written a treatise on anatomy at 5. He had written 4 books and knew 8 languages by age 8, and when he entered Harvard at 11, he was lecturing auditoriums of mathematicians.
But surely it's better to watch Barney, Sesame Street, and Blue's Clues until you're at least 14, so as to grow up to become a well-rounded American.
My 10-month-old has a few words (or at least sounds), such as Ma for Mommy, Da for Daddy, and Baby when she sees herself in the mirror. (Yes, 2 syllables.)
What I really need, though, is a way to get my 4-year-old to *stop* using words. Like when I saw her playing with a toy at the dinner table.
Me: "Hey! What are you doing!?" Her: "I'm eating my damn dinner!"
Yeah, she learned that from me too.
It was a real surprise for me and my wife when at around 3 month old, my first son said his name! It was a only time, have to be there time. But he actually really said it's name with me and my wife has direct witness ! And not the less it's name are phonetically a little hard to prononce : Raphael !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
Capacity isn't the issue. We are all born with brains. What scientists are researching is to what extent can the development of communication skills be accelerated. We all know babies can learn a language or two just by observing and practically duplicating what they are hearing and seeing. The real matter at hand is how can we interact (read: train) with babies making them more conscious about their communication capability and thus help them develop that skill?
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.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
According to numerous accounts I was speaking many words at 10 months, and complete sentences at 12. I also knew most of my alphabet by two years, and could "read" from the newspaper (sounding words out) at 4.
Of course, the "interestingness" qualification mentioned above was clearly in effect, as my first word was (I shit you not) "titty."
What can I say...some things in your life stick with you.
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
My mother is a doula (works with women in more of a supportive mental sense than a medical sense during pregancy, childbirth, and afterwards) who is doing a class on sign language for mothers to be or recent mothers.
According to her (with about 15 years of experience under her belt as a doula, and "speaks" fluent sign language), babies can learn basic sign language before they can talk, and that teaching them sign language will enhance their mental capabilities (speak earlier, read earlier, higher IQ). She's listed off studies to back this, though I've never checked into them myself.
However, I don't doubt it. After all, we can teach monkeys to communicate via sign language. While certainly not dumb animals, they don't have the mental capabilities of humans (do monkeys have soap operas? There you go), so it shouldn't come as a surprise that we can teach humans sign language at an early age.
As a parent myself, I know my little one knew what I was telling her before she was a year old. She was an early walker, so after I would change her, I would give her the wrapped up diaper and tell her to throw it away.
A complex sentance, loaded with stuff she'd have to figure out on her own, and she did just fine.
So, from the parents of the world, let me just say, "no shit".
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I imagine that this report was done by a male scientist who spends all his day in the lab, meanwhile his wife is at home spending all day with the children.
He comes home at 7pm one evening: "Darling I've made a wonderful discovery! Babies can learn words as young as ten months! Isn't that wonderful!" His wife looks at him distainfully and says: "Your son said his first word at eight months."
As a father of two I don't find this surprising at all. In fact, if these scientists has just bothered to ask a group of mothers they would have found this out in five minutes.
I grew up in a medium sized family with lots of brothers, a sister, cousins, nieces and nephews so dealing with kids is normal. Unfortunately as an adult I am always amazed at how clueless many of my peers are when it comes to being parents. I have co-workers who have no idea that most children talk early if their parents encourage them to communicate, or learn to crawl earlier if you play tug-of-war, or walk if you support them by letting them hold you fingers. Watching my 12 month olds outclass 18 months olds is priceless. Its not the kids who are behind, it is the parents.
My daughter was using sign language at 8 months, and by 9 months old, she was becoming a voracious inquisitor. If she saw something she didn't have a sign for, she asked (she made up her own signs for this interaction). If we didn't have a sign for it, she made up her own. By 10 months old, she knew around a dozen signs for colors alone, several dozen for toys and environmental objects and phenomena (hot, cold, pain, tree, rock, rainbow, rain, clouds, sun, moon, etc.), a dozen animals (at least!) and of course, the necessities (milk, juice, water, diaper change, food - cereal, fruit, etc) She also began making up signs on her own, sometimes without telling us until it was time to guess. That made things very interesting at times, but quite fun. By 14 months, she had well over 120 signs. And no, I don't think this is exceptional (though I do think my daughter is :), it's just a result of constant interaction without any pressure to advance faster than she wished.
For each sign she knew, she certainly recognized the spoken word associated and could demonstrate on verbal interaction without the object being present. She just focused more on the meaning than on teaching her mouth to make the sounds come out right.
So, I don't think the scientists are getting the whole picture when they restrict their research to actual verbal language. Studies have shown (both formal and informal, but don't ask me for the links - find them yourself if you're that interested) that children are intellectually capable of beginning their mastery of language much earlier than 10 months. The problem is that most people (scientists and non-scientists alike) forget that a physical inability to form words doesn't mean an intellectual inability to understand them.
Personally, and I have no evidence to support this, anecdotal or otherwise, I think babies begin linking sound to meaning as soon as they can visually focus on their parents, and hear their voices. Voice has been suggested as a major factor in bonding between mother and child, and I think there was a study done about this some time ago. There's probably a lot more physiological detail here that I'm certainly not qualified to expand on, but right or wrong, that's my opinion for the time being.
The only trick with sign language is in realizing that babies will use their mouths for getting food in and tasting things - which doesn't really require much oral dexterity, but they use their hands and fingers a lot more when pulling ears, noses, hair, etc. and when poking eyes and grabbing things to put into their mouths. They learn hand dexterity more quickly than they learn how to use their tongue - after all they can see what they're doing wrong with their hands and learn from it. Even so, they don't get signs as precise as an adult would, but they get them close enough for a parent - or anyone communicating with them regularly - to understand them perfectly. Some people have expressed concerns that using sign language will delay verbal language use, and this appears to be true in a small percentage of cases, but the only time I've ever seen it is when there were other issues with hearing that weren't caught early enough.
After our experience with sign language the first time around, we enthusiastically recommend it to anyone and everyone we come across with a small infant (at least those that stand still long enough to listen), and we plan to introduce it even earlier with our next child, coming later this year.
As far as the article, uh duh. Said four year old knew a number of words by 10 months- Mama, Dada, Adah (Adam, his name) My current toddler is slower, but he certainly knew Mama and Dada well before a year. At 14 months, his favorite word is Uh-oh. Not a favorite of ours, since he uses it appropriately...
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Well the article title does say "learning words," so this would be more along the lines of learning to pronounce (in an understandable manner) a word and/or possibly associate that word with a particular object, action, etc.
:-)
Moreover, young children like to repeat the things they hear, so even at this young age you should probably put 'em in another room next time you have to devirus a $#@)($*! computer in your office
If you think babies can't learn language before 1, you should check out Baby Signs. Babies can learn simple sign language as early as 8 months. Just because they don't have the necessary muscle control to speak, doesn't mean they don't understand language.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
My daughter was using words reliably at 7 months. Her first? "Ki-ka", referring to the neighbor's cat. It was a consistent pattern of usage, too. "Da-da" was next, and eventually "Ma-ma."
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
If hinges are that fascinating, imagine how incredible the infantile study of LATCHES must be!!
Many linguists disagree with Pinker, and he is by no means in the majority with his suppositions.
l anguagespeech/EvolLangFac_Cognition.pdf
I've read your posts. You seem to have been convinced by a very good writer that he has the inside track on the truth.
However, to give you some perspective, Noam Chomsky disagrees with him. He's not the only one.
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/publications/
Pinker did the same thing to you that he does to so many others. He convinced you with flowery porse that disguised the lack of empirical support for his idea of "evolutionary psychology".
Pinker isn't in the majority. How you could be a linguistics student and believe this is beyond me.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
I agree. My wife has been teaching out son sign language and he spoke a complete sentence before he was 8 months old. (It was "I want my mommy" while I was trying to feed him breakfast, much to my chagrin.) We normally ask him about a particular toy or person during playtime and most (80%+) of the time he does identify the correct item or person. (He has 3 siblings and 2 parents to pick from, so random looks would only make him right about 20% of the time.)
And now I'll probably get modded down as some kind of Slashdot infiltrating imposter for claiming to be married and having children. C'est la vie.
Kids MUCH younger than that can certainly link concepts to phonemes, why not object?
I mean, tell a 6 month old "no", even in a rising tone (non-negatively inflected, in english) and they get the concept. How hard is it to believe that they can tie concept-object? Seems logical to me.
Although I have to say I know a lot of adults that could use a refresher course.
-Styopa
Don't be ridiculous. Of course the teaching has an influence -- you've gone on to say that the child's learning is based on his exposure to the language in his environment, and obviously the teaching forms a part of that environment.
Unless, of course, you're thinking that parental influence magically won't count because of its insufficient academic rarification. "The naïve 'goo-goo' approach of the non-specialist (Foonly 78, inter alia)..."
Yeah, I heard that, once.
Mind the Gap
The old saying goes, "You spend a year trying to get them to talk... and the next 17 trying to get them to stop."
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The naturally gifted people can have a harder time making the transition than the hard workers, but it's not unsurmountable. Mainly, I've noticed that the gifted often have trouble figuring out what they want to do. (When my brother took the ACTs, he scored 33-35 on every section and the area where it recommended areas of study translated those even results to "You have no particular talent in any area.") Often, they're the ones who spend years in an undeclared major, or switch frequently. Or, more sadly, they lock themselves in for four years of a degree, then realize it wasn't what they wanted.
The other big problem for gifted people is adjusting to difficulty. You can see this some with bright kids who go to college, realizing that they've gone from being the big fish in a small pond to being a midsize fish in an even bigger pond. And then, there are some who still breeze through college without effort. When they're confronted with a situation which requires them to buckle down, they may not find they have the skills for it whether it's holding down their job or maintaining a marriage.
My feeling is that what's important for bright kids, at any level, is to keep learning no matter how hard the teachers work to prevent it, and to never settle for just coasting by when you know you can do better.
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I don't find this surprising at all. My friend's daughter started learning sign language before 10 months. At her first birthday she constructed a novel and meaningful sentence in sign. She, apparently, was tired and overstimulated and started telling people to "Please bye-bye."
As I understand it, a lot of this is that the motor control required for basic sign is simpler than the finer motor control of vocalization and therefore the child can participate in language at a much earlier age. At one point Baby Sign was well on its way to becoming the next flashcards, although I don't know how far it's progressed since.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
As a fetus, my daughter recited a proof of Riehmann's hypothesis as I listened through a stethoscope.
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
I have to second this. Our daughter was very easy to deal with as far as tantrums and so forth go and my wife and I attribute a lot of it to a lack of frustration with communication. If she wanted something or was interested in something, she had a method of expressing herself and it seemed to make her much happier. Signing seemed very intuitive for her to pickup and she learned very rapidly to sign for things she liked. She just turned 2 and has been able to do 5 word sentences already, so I don't think it's negatively impacted her verbal learning either.
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10 months seems a bit conservative. Our daughter learned to recognize the word "Kitty" at about 5 1/2 months. We have 2 cats, and she laughs whenever she sees them as if they were the next Penn and Teller. If one of the cats was around, but not yet noticed, we could just ask her "Where's the Kitty?", and she would stop whatever she was doing, and look around the entire room until she found them. 100% repeatable by 6 months.
Again, no surprise to parents, but kids are much more capable than even the so-called experts suppose.
- Brain.
"Dance like it hurts. Love like you need money. Work when people are watching." - Dogbert.
I think the most interesting finding was that 10 mos olds link names to what THEY are looking at, not what you are pointing at.
A 10 month old baby can reach out for objects and pick them up using accurate finger motions, feed itself, perform the balancing act required to sit up, respond to its name, turn towards a sound and can do all kinds of other things. Babies can peform feats of visual processing that blow away the cleverest image processing software. So why is it news that a baby can recognise some words at 10 months, something that even a PocketPC can do?
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Well, not really. But early on, we could name one of her books and she could pull it off the shelf. She recognized by colors and patterns or something. You could also recite part of the book and she'd pull the right one.
We could get some gullible people to think she was reading the book title to pick them out. Great party trick.
I was kind of shocked a while back when I visited my aunt and discovered that one of my cousins was three but unable to read. Well, actually what I was shocked about was their total lack of desire to teach the child. I fully credit my own dad with teaching me to read before I turned two by the simple expedient of sitting me on his lap and reading to me while pointing to words. After a few months I appearantly worked it out, because I have no memory of ever not being able to read. My earliest memory is of sitting at the living room table, reading a book (and knowing not to color it up), while Sesame Street played on the TV. I was about 2.5 years old, and according to them, had been reading for almost a year by that point.
:)
Any parents out there: The biggest favor you can ever do for you kid is to teach them to read early. Not only will this improve their speech, it will get them into the habit of reading, which means that they will learn much, much faster as you won't have to tell them every little thing. It will also make them annoyingly good at Trivial Pursuit, which is always an invaluable skill.
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read!" - Mitch Hedberg
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
My girlfriend's parents keep telling me how she was speaking complete sentences like 'Mommy and daddy come here,' 'Uncle go away,' etc at the age of 6 months only. And sometimes I feel she hasn't stopped since! What? No sweetheart, I was just *NO CARRIER*
-Shaunak
My son Jason started talking at about nine months and was using complete sentences by a year. At his one year checkup, we told the pediatrician that Jason was talking already. The pediatrician pointed to one of the pictures decorating his office. "What's that, Jason?" he asked. Jason said, "That... is... a... picture... of... a... bird... on... wall." (Jason spoke very slowly and haltingly, with difficulty, like he was thinking hard about each word.) The doctor was amazed, he said he had never heard a child answer like that at that age. He said he thought Jason might say "bird". In fact, he said he would almost have wondered if we had taught Jason to parrot that sentence except that he made one grammatical error.
Jason is now in grad school, got 1600 on his SATs and graduated from Caltech. He's a bright kid. I'm sure there are many kids who are talking well before a year old, and using complete sentences as Jason did at a year.
Either I'm a freak, or this study hasn't been around children enough--or at all.
Do not disturb. Already disturbed. http://www.teaaddictedgeek.com
You should probably dye your hair bright red colors and be really interesting? :) I'll keep it in mind if I ever have another one. I don't think my daughter said anything for 14 months that was more than normal cooing, crying, and depriving us of lots of sleep. Her first word was: "Kitty!". My sisters kid is 8 months old and says "Hi!". So I don't doubt that some kids are quite capable of speaking very early. It probably helped that when her dad sees her, or anyone for that matter, the first word they say is "Hi!!".
Salt
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
With my younger two kids, when each was somewhere around 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 years, I found an opportunity to ask, "You have lots to say but the words don't come, is that right?" Agreement. "That must be really hard to endure." Big, big agreement, mixed with apparent relief.
Alright, you've identified my situation exactly. Now, what the hell do I do about it?!
Honestly, I don't really know. I know some people who slogged their way through a few years of a job in their field so as to pay off college loan debt and raise enough capital to make another try at school. My brother took the route of moonlighting in a job that he does enjoy (bartending). I do wish you the best of luck though.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Excellent observation.
If I hadn't already posted in this thread, I'd have to mod that one up as informative.
That's not to say that young children and infants are all little geniuses that are squandered by the limitations of their little bodies, but it's clear when you watch many infants observing the world around them that they have thoughts and questions. The absence of language is the biggest barrier to overcome. Giving them some real interaction with a mode of communication they can muddle through more productively than the old "point and grunt" method is certainly a serious leg up in their development.
My brother was amazingly able to speak sentences at 9 months, but then couldn't walk until he was nearly 2. He didn't need to! He would just sit on the floor and give commands to my mom. "Bring me that." "Take me over there."
Boy, our tax dollars at work. Put a bunch of moms in a room and they could have told you what this guy did. The funny thing is that it really makes no difference in forecasting how a child will turn out. My son was walking at 10 months, which I thought meant he had good physical ability. Nope - he hates sports. He just hated crawling at the time. He didn't talk more than one word at a time until he was almost 2, at which time he started speaking complete sentences. He'll start college next fall at the age of 15. Go figure...