Words spoken by adults have a significant impact on the cognitive development of three-month-old babies, inform US psychologists in the Child Development magazine.
Words have a greater impact on the development of the ability to associate and organize concepts in three-month-old babies than other sounds, e.g. musical, argue Northwestern University researchers Alissa Ferry, Susan Hespos and Sandra Waxman
They conducted a series of experiments in which they analyzed how three-month-old infants developed the ability to associate and categorize concepts.
Even for three-month-old babies, words play a special role in cognitive development. They support the ability to create new categories, explains Hespos.
In one study group, infants were shown a picture of a fish and told Look at the fish !. The children in the second group saw the same picture, with the difference that it was not accompanied by spoken words, but a specific sound.
Then the children were shown a picture of another fish, and next to it a picture of a dinosaur. The researchers measured how long the children would focus their eyes on each picture.
It turned out that the children from the group who heard the words accompanying the pictures looked at the drawing of the fish for a longer time. This means that they remembered the previous drawing, which they associated with the new image on the basis of the same category that was created in their heads. (PAP)