- Baby may not be saying much at five months but she could
be thinking deep thoughts.
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- Researchers have found that five-month-old babies can
comprehend concepts for which they have not yet learned words, thus answering
the age-old question: Which comes first, an idea or the language to express
it?
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- "How do we think about the world before we are corrupted
by culture and the world?" asks Yale University psychologist Paul
Bloom. "One way to learn is to look at babies."
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- Researchers at Vanderbilt University and Harvard University
found that 5-month-old babies being reared in English-speaking homes were
able to grasp the difference between a loose fit and a tight fit - putting
a pencil into a plastic cup, for instance, versus stacking a second cup
inside the first.
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- That distinction is important in the Korean language
but absent from English. By showing that babies growing up in English-speaking
homes are sensitive to the distinction, the researchers demonstrated that
some forms of thinking do precede language.
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- Moreover, infants seem to share fundamental ideas about
the world around them that languages later alter.
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- Babies can learn any language but eventually lose the
ability to detect foreign sounds - this is partly why it is difficult to
learn a second language at an older age. The same idea may apply to concepts,
notes Bloom in an editorial published with the new research in the journal
Nature - babies in different cultures acquire meaning that is of most relevance
to their contexts.
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- However, humans don't lose the ability to learn distinctions
in meaning: Adult English speakers can tell the difference between a loose
fit and a tight fit.
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