Babies' Ability to Detect Complex Rules in Language Outshines That of Adults, Research Suggests

Babies' Ability to Detect Complex Rules in Language Outshines That of Adults

ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2012) — New research examining auditory mechanisms of language learning in babies has revealed that infants as young as three months of age are able to automatically detect and learn complex dependencies between syllables in spoken language. By contrast, adults only recognized the same dependencies when asked to actively search for them. The study by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig also highlights the important role of basic pitch discrimination abilities for early language development.