Baby talk: Babies prefer listening to their own kind

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-05/mu-btb051115.php

Public Release: 12-May-2015
McGill University

Everyone likes to look at young babies. But who wants to listen? Well...it turns out that other babies do. In fact, a McGill University/UQAM research team has discovered that 6-month-old infants appear to be much more interested in listening to other babies than they are in listening to adults. It is an important finding because the researchers believe that an attraction to infant speech sounds may help to kick start and support the crucial processes involved in learning how to talk. The discovery could also potentially offer new avenues to help infants with problems such as hearing impairment that hinder the development of their language skills.

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"As adults, we use language to communicate. But when a young infant starts to make speech sounds, it often has more to do with exploring than with communicating ... in fact babies typically vocalize when they are alone, without any interaction or eye contact with others," says Prof. Polka. "That's because to learn how to speak babies need to spend lots of time moving their mouths and vocal cords to understand the kind of sounds they can make themselves. They need, quite literally, to 'find their own voice'."

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