Saturday, July 24, 2004

Babies think before they speak

"The distinction between a tight fit versus a loose fit is marked in Korean but not in English. A cap on a pen would be a tight fit relationship, while a pen [in a shoe box] would be a loose fit relationship. English does not mark this distinction in the same way"
Yet 5-month old babies of both English-speaking and Korean-speaking parents notice the distinction, apparently indicating that we are born knowing how to make and see such a distinction but that English speakers learn to ignore it as they grow up.

As summarized by www.4woman.gov
"'Adults were glossing over the distinction that the babies were actually detecting,' said co-author Sue Hespos, an assistant professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University.

'These findings suggest that humans possess a rich set of concepts before we learn language,' added co-author Elizabeth Spelke, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. 'Learning a particular language may lead us to favor some of the these concepts over others, but the concepts already existed before we put them into words.'"

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