When babies learn to talk, they pay close attention to grammar. Specifically verbs. A new study shows that hearing what an objectdoes is how they learn what an object is.
Researchers showed infants between 15 and 19 months of age (pairs) of images on a screen. Each pair included an animal and a non-living object.
Then the screen went dark and the infants (overheard) a conversation that included a nonsense word: “blick.” Some babies heard a sentence with an action verb like, “The blick eats.” Others heard a sentence like “The blick is over here,” with no action verb.
The infants then again saw the screen with an animal and an (inanimate) object. And a researcher said, “Look at the blick.” Infants who had heard the active sentence looked more often and longer at the animal, compared with those who had heard the sentence lacking any action. Because if all the babies know is that “the blick is over here,” it could be any object, alive or not. The study is in the journal Cognition. [Brock Ferguson, Eileen Graf and Sandra R. Waxman, Infants use known verbs to learn novel nouns: Evidence from 15- and 19-month-olds]
The researchers say that learning language (requires) the infant to listen to natural conversations and to analyze the complex situations being discussed. Such as why the blick forgot to pick up the mooshlik on the way home from work.
