At 09:28 AM 4/10/99 -0400, Stephen Black wrote:
<snip>
>My question: is there any evidence to the contrary, either that:
>
>1) early babbling of babies is _not_ the same the world over
>
>2) babies no older than six months _do_ show differences in their
>ability to detect phonemic pairs depending on which language their
>mother speaks.
>
>If there is such evidence, it may be due either to genetic or prenatal
>exposure, but it would certainly suggest that there is more going on
>than just late (post 6-month) exposure to a particular language.
>
>-Stephen
While I haven't come across any studies that answer question #1, there is
some evidence that babies can discriminate between languages earlier than 6
months.
Apparently, human babies can differentiate between languages as early as 4
days after birth. Mehler et al. (1988) found that 4-day-old native French
newborns could discriminate between a recording of a woman speaking Russian
from the same woman speaking French. These same French newborns could not
discriminate between a woman speaking English and the same woman speaking
Italian. Also, 4-day-olds of non-French speaking parents could not
discriminate between French and Russian recordings. Finally, native English
2-month-olds did not respond differentially to Russian or French, but could
easily discriminate between English and Italian recordings.
These results would certainly suggest that infants younger than 6 months old
can discriminate between different languages. Based on work done with
prenatal auditory learning (i.e., DeCasper & Fifer, 1980; DeCasper & Spence,
1986), I would suspect that prenatal auditory experience with their mothers'
voices provides human infants with a "head start" in being able to
discriminate between their native language and non-familiar languages.
Hope this helps!
Becky Columbus
References:
DeCasper, A.J. & Fifer, W.P. (1980). Of human bonding: Newborns prefer
their mothers' voices. Science, 208, 1174-1176.
DeCasper, A.J. & Spence, M. (1986). Newborns prefer a familiar story over
an unfamiliar one. Infant Behavior and Development, 9, 133-150.
Mehler, J., Jusczyk, P.W., Lambertz, G., Halsted, N., Bertoncini, J., &
Amiel-Tison, C. (1988). A precursor of language acquisition in young
infants. Cognition, 29, 143-178.
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Rebecca F. Columbus, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
Albion College
Albion, MI 49224
Phone: (517) 629-0740
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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