On Mon, 12 Apr 1999, Becky Columbus wrote:
>
> 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.
........
There are so many artifactual factors involved that I am not sure
if there is a proper interpretation for the above findings.
At the moment of birth are babies French,Spanisn,Italian,English
etc? We should not confuse nationality with linguistic specificity.
As to the above reference,what if the baby is adopted?
MIchael Sylvester
Daytona Beach,Florida
