Go ahead, talk to your newborn, even if your little bundle of joy seems oblivious to the conversation. According to a new research from Christine Tsang, an assistant professor of Psychology at Huron University College, The University of Western Ontario, infants pick up on more than you think.
Tsang finds infants as young as six or eight months old are able to remember new sounds after just three minutes of exposure, something older babies and even adults can’t master.
Infants also prefer language, followed closely by music, over random noise. The findings could lead to new discoveries about how early exposure to language and music impacts later speech and reading abilities. Moving forward, Tsang is researching the impact early musical training has on cognitive development.
“It certainly tells us that babies aren’t the little bumps on a log that we used to think they were,” explained Tsang. “We should be thinking about what kinds of experiences we’re giving our infants right from the get go. We know that auditory experiences play a very large role in language learning and are critical to later development.”
Tsang will discuss her findings on Thursday, January 31 at 2:30 p.m. at Theoretical and Applied Linguistics Lab (TALL), University College, Room 135. Her presentation, “The Auditory Environment and the Infant Listener: How Real-World Cues Can Shape Auditory Perception,” is part of Linguistics Talks @ Western.
She studies babies aged six to 11 months through her infant laboratory at Huron, in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Morton, a Psychology professor specializing in cognitive development. Tsang also works with children at the Dr. Mary J. Wright Laboratory School at Western. She welcomes new babies for her studies. |
