Baby lab reveals surprisingly early gift of gab 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 shows that babies as young as twelve months can
identify "adjacent relationships" i