New Clue on How Babies Learn Words

March 22, 2006 -- Babies may learn words before their first birthday but not like older kids do.

Experts report that 10-month-old babies can learn new words and usually link those words to interesting objects -- even if those words and objects don't really go together.

"Ten-month-olds simply 'glue' a label onto the most interesting object they see," says researcher Shannon Pruden, MA, in a news release.

"Perhaps this is why children learn words faster when parents look at and name the objects that infants already find interesting," adds Pruden, a graduate student studying psychology at Philadelphia's Temple University.

Pruden's study appears in Child Development.

Talking to Junior

"Talking with children matters, even at this very early age," Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, PhD, says in a news release.

"Little babies are learning words fast, even at 10 months when they aren't saying much at all," adds Golinkoff, a University of Delaware education professor who worked on Pruden's study.

"Parents should talk to their babies from early on because that's the only way infants can learn language," Golinkoff says. "They should also talk about what the baby is interested in."

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, PhD, a psychology professor at Temple University, also worked on the study.

"The exciting thing is that a lot of people weren't even sure that 10-month-olds were paying attention," Hirsh-Pasek says, in a news release. "But this study shows that not only are they paying attention, they're actually learning words," she adds.

Learning Quickly

The researchers studied 44 babies who were 10 months old. The babies were shown "interesting" and "boring" objects.

The interesting items included a sparkly blue wand and a red, green, and pink party clacker. The clacker had a handle and three brightly colored, movable boards that clacked against each other, making noise.

The boring objects were a beige bottle opener and a white cabinet latch. The babies played with all of the objects and were much more fascinated by the interesting objects, as expected.

Then, playtime ended and the experiment began.

Catching On

The researchers put an interesting object and a boring object on a board and tried to teach the babies a word for one or the other object. They used nonsense words "modi" and "glorp."

For instance, a researcher would stand between the two objects, make eye contact with the baby (called Jordan in this example), and then look at the interesting or boring object and say, "Jordan, look! A modi! Wow, it's a modi! Look, a modi! Jordan, look, a modi! It's a modi!"

Later, the researcher would ask the baby, "Jordan, where is the modi? Can you find the modi? Do you see the modi?" The researchers followed the baby's gaze and counted how long the baby looked at the objects.