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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.'"
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.
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
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.
Procrastination Man strikes again!