Baby lab reveals surprisingly early gift of gab | News | Notre Dame News | University of Notre Dame Liquid error: internal Skip To Content Skip To Navigation Skip To Search University of Notre Dame Notre Dame News Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Home Contact Search Menu Home › News › Baby lab reveals surprisingly early gift of gab Baby lab reveals surprisingly early gift of gab Published: December 07, 2011 Author: Liquid error: internal From the moment they’re born, babies are highly attuned to communicate and motivated to interact. And they’re great listeners. New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that during the first year of life, when babies spend so much time listening to language, they’re actually tracking word patterns that will support their process of word- learning that occurs between the ages of about 18 months and two years. “Babies are constantly looking for language clues in context and sound,” says Jill Lany, assistant professor of psychology and director of Notre Dame’s baby lab, where she conducts studies on how babies acquire language. “My research suggests that there are some surprising clues in the sound stream that may help babies learn the meanings of words. They can distinguish different kinds of words like nouns and verbs by information in that sound stream.” Lany’s studies show that babies as young as 12 months can identify “adjacent relationships” in which a phrase or sound like “it’s a” occurs immediately before an object. “If I were to say to you, ‘Oh look, it’s a dax,’ you might not know what a ‘dax’ is, but the cue ‘it’s a’ lets a baby know that what follows is an object,” Lany says. Similarly, if a person were to say, “I’m daxing it,” the same principal is at work with cues and word patterns that indicate a verb or action word. Babies actually can use these patterns as clues to the meanings of new words they are learning. By about 15 months, babies are able to track more complicated “non-adjacent relationships” in which the word cue may be even further removed. “We often think about grammar coming after word-learning, but in fact, my research shows that all this information that babies are picking up in that first year of life about how words are occurring in their language, actually is supporting this process of word-learning prior to mastery of language.” Contact: Jill Lany, 574-631-4524, jlany@nd.edu Posted In: Research Home Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Related October 05, 2022 Astrophysicists find evidence for the presence of the first stars October 04, 2022 NIH awards $4 million grant to psychologists researching suicide prevention September 29, 2022 Notre Dame, Ukrainian Catholic University launch three new research grants September 27, 2022 Notre Dame, Trinity College Dublin engineers join to advance novel treatment for cystic fibrosis September 22, 2022 Climate-prepared countries are losing ground, latest ND-GAIN index shows For the Media Contact Office of Public Affairs and Communications Notre Dame News 500 Grace Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Pinterest © 2022 University of Notre Dame Search Mobile App News Events Visit Accessibility Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube LinkedIn