Why 'papa, mommy' are baby's first words A new Canadian study
shows why "papa", "daddy" and "mommy" are the only first words
new-born babies understand. The study, conducted by Judit
Gervain of Vancouver's University of British Columbia and her
team, says that babies are born with an innate ability to
recognize these words. It concludes that the human brain is
hard-wired to recognize certain repetition patterns and decipher
languages. Using the latest optical brain imaging techniques,
Gervain and her team of researchers from Italy and Chile
documented brain activities of 22 newborns (2-3 days old) when
exposed to recordings of made-up words. The researchers mixed
words that end in repeating syllables - such as "mubaba" and
"penana" - with words without repetition - such as "mubage" and
"penaku." They found increased brain activities in the temporal
and left frontal areas of the newborns' brain whenever the
repetitious words were played. Words with non-adjacent
repetitions ("bamuba" or "napena") elicited no di