Study finds infants pick up words through repetition, learn shortly after birth
Published Saturday September 6th, 2008
Moran Ben-David was proud of his infant daughter Shaya when she said her first word around the age of one year: "Aba," which is Hebrew for "dad."
The Toronto resident doesn't doubt that she associates the word to him.
"When she said it she meant it," he said.
"It was me."
But he also acknowledges that it's an easy word to say, particularly because it ends with an "a."
Ben-David is likely on to something, according to study out of the University of British Columbia.
Dr. Judit Gervain with the school's Department of Psychology's Infant Studies Centre has examined why babies are so efficient and fast when learning to speak.
The study hypothesized that babies start to learn immediately after birth.
Gervain and a team of researchers studied 22 newborns, exposing them to a recording of made-up words, half with repeated syllables and half without.
The two- and three-day-old infants listened to words such as "mubaba" and "penana," along with others such as "mubage" and "penaku."
Gervain said she wanted to find out if babies learn through structural patterns.
Her studies appeared to verify that.
"We found the newborn brain responds with increased activation to these repeated words, the words that had the repeated syllables" she said.
The researchers noticed, using light-based brain imaging, that the babies' brain activity would increase in the area associated with language.
In other words, the babies would think more when they heard the words with repeated syllables.
This could be why babies' first words are often easy words like "mama" or "dada," or in Ben-David's daughter's case, "aba."
In many different language, the "baby words" for mother and father often have repeated syllables.
"Newborn babies are able to learn about the structures of language as long as the structure is simple enough, namely through repetition" said Gervain.
The findings also led the research team to conclude that children learn much earlier than most people believe.
"The learning process actually starts on day one, or maybe even before in the womb," Gervain said.
Repetition is often used with babies to encourage them to learn, thus making learning language easier for them.
The findings of the study could also explain why babies and young children pick up languages much faster than adults - because the repeated words and structures make their brain work more.
"A baby, who doesn't really know anything about the world, and doesn't receive any explicit teaching, picks language up in two, three years," she said.
However, Gervain said that Ben-David's assumption that his daughter knows that he is "aba" is probably wishful thinking.
She said putting together words and meaning likely doesn't come until later in development.
"Our results show is that these sounds or these forms are easy to learn," said Gervain.
"Associating meaning to them is another step."
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