Babies understand many of the words spoken by adults, and their brain processes them in the same way as the adult brain, researchers say in the Cerebral Cortex magazine.
Based on modern brain imaging technologies, scientists from the University of California, San Diego have shown that the brains of one-year-old children process the words they hear in the same areas as the brains of adults and at the same time.
Moreover, children not only process these words as sounds, but also understand their meaning.
Children use the same brain mechanisms as adults to access the + database + word meanings. This database is kept up-to-date until adulthood, explains lead author Katherine E. Travis.
In one experiment, children aged 12-18 months were shown pictures of various familiar objects. At that time, the children heard the name of the object. Scientists studied how their brains reacted when the name was correct (e.g. a picture of a ball and the word ball) and incorrect (e.g. a picture of a ball and the word dog).
It turned out that in both types of cases, normal and erroneous, brain activity increased in the same areas as in adults. This means that the children understood the meaning of the words and their brain responded with an alarm when the meaning heard did not match the meaning in their database.
Previously, some believed that infants processed speech data in different areas of the brain than adults. It happened that, despite damage to, for example, the area of Broka or Wernicke, which are responsible for speech control in the brain, children developed normal speech skills.
In the light of the latest research, it should be assumed that this is possible due to the plasticity of the human brain. When some areas are damaged at an early age, others successfully take over their functions, the researchers explain.