Do you know Zhongwen, little guy?
Infants as young as four months old can discriminate between different langauges, according to a new study by researchers from the University of British Columbia (UCB) that is described in the May 24th Scientific American. The article notes that it has been known since the 1980s that very young children can discriminate between different languages when they are spoken; the UBC researchers have determined that children can also distinguish between languages via gestures—-and it is the children’s relying on such visual and such non-verbal cues that is of interest to me. My son Charlie struggles to understand and to use spoken language—-we had a five-minute confusion today when I asked him to “give me the bottle and hold onto the bag”; he repeatedly gave me the bag—and seems to rely on so many other aspects of language, from the tone and pitch of words to, indeed, gestures.
Toward that end, researchers from the University of British Columbia (U.B.C.) in Vancouver separated 36 infants into three separate groups of four-, six- and eight-month-olds. They had the babies sit on their mothers’ laps and watch bilingual speakers—all women—on a muted television screen read from a children’s book in either English or French.
Working first with babies from homes where only English was spoken, researchers began a video with a storyteller who read in one language, then switched to reading in the other tongue when the baby started to lose interest. After the transition, the two youngest sets of infants showed renewed interest, indicating they recognized that something had changed, piquing their curiosity.
“People assume French and English are very similar,” says Janet Werker, a professor of psychology and senior author of the study published this week in Science. “In fact, English and French are very dissimilar along many dimensions, such as the rhythm of the language…. We assume that babies are using the visual correlates of some of those differences to distinguish” them.
While the four-month-olds noted the shift in the languages, the eight-month-olds seemed oblivious. The researchers believe that “infants may be born with an innate ability to visually discriminate language, but that it fades with time and age if they are only exposed to one.” Of course, Charlie is far beyond his infant years, but the study underscores for me the importance of the non-verbal aspects of language which Charlie seems to grasp more readily than words.
The study is being published this week in Science.
[Zhongwen means “Chinese.”]
5 opinions for Do you know Zhongwen, little guy?
ebohlman
May 25, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Have you ever considered seeing how well Charlie might do learning ASL? There seems to be some evidence that typically-developing kids can learn and use sign language well before they’re able to speak, which sort of suggests to me that if a kid has speech/language problems that are caused by “blocks” in the “speech part,” sign language might be a way to more directly engage the “language part.” ASL for typically-developing, hearing kids seems to have become a minor yuppie fad, but it might be quite valuable for kids who don’t communicate well with speech, and the evidence from the yuppies indicates that it does not interfere with speech-communication development (I think the biggest problem in the use of alternative-communication modalities for kids with poor vocal communication skills is that “the perfect becomes the enemy of the good”; parents and professionals unnecessarily worry that a less than Perfectly Optimal communication strategy will preclude the later development of The Right Thing; this is really just a variant of the (totally ineffective) parenting strategy of forbidding a kid from doing things he’s good at in order to “make” him work on things he’s bad at). Given the evidence of people like Amanda who are a lot better with language than they are with speech, it might be worth a try (keeping in mind that his language abilities may still be quite variable, just like Amanda wrote about in a recent post; the goal shouldn’t be perfect fluency of communication, just better range of expression).
Kristina Chew, PhD
May 25, 2007 at 11:21 pm
I’m glad you brought up ASL—Charlie initially learning to communicate through sign language (we had to modify the signs as his motor skills were then limited—he was just over 2 1/2 years old). Making the movements seemed to help especially — it has been sometimes since we worked on sign. Which might well mean it is time to try them out again!
Susan
May 25, 2007 at 11:49 pm
My son learned to communicate through ASL and sing-song speech. Although his fine motor skills were not good enough to sign well to others, he developed receptive language through signing to him, supported by verbal language. We faded the ASL prompts, and he began speaking (with artic issues, but still speaking), however we still sign a little.
I’ve just been accepted into a graduate autism specialist program, and interestingly enough, they require two quarters (8 credits) of ASL, even though PECS is considered to be preferable according to the majority. Given my experience, I say that ASL is an excellent support for receptive…I’m just not sure about expressive language.
As a disclaimer - my son is very visual…has read since the age of 2. Therefore, in his case, it makes sense that having a visual reinforcer promoted his communication learning.
Niksmom
May 26, 2007 at 8:22 am
We’ve been using some signing with nik for about a year now. At first, it was frustrating b/c we really didn’t know if anything was getting through. All of a sudden, his receptive language seemed to blossom. He definitely doesn’t have the motor skills to make many signs (but boy are they adorable when he does!) but we find that *our* signing to him to give him choices or to indicate what’s coming (eating, diaper change, trip in the car) — usually reinforced by spoken (sometimes sung!) language, has reduced *some* of the difficulties weve had around getting him to cooperate. I guess, since Nik’s never had any real expressive language beyond “mama” or “dada” (which then went away), we figured *anything* would help him develop language skills
EBohlman, thanks for the reminder about the difference between language and speech. It’s easy to get caught up in the “he isn’t speaking” fears instead of focusing on how Nik is communicating. And he’s got LOTS to tell us! LOL
Kristina Chew, PhD
May 26, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Communication is the goal above and beyond speech for Charlie—–not that the rest of us are so good at communicating either!
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