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Babies process language in a grown-up way

Babies, even those too young to talk, can well understand many of the words that adults say - and their brains also process them in a grown-up way, a new study has claimed.

Babies process language in a grown-up way

Babies, even those too young to talk, can well understand many of the words that adults say - and their brains also process them in a grown-up way, a new study has claimed.

Previously, many people thought infants might use an entirely different mechanism for learning words, and that learning began primitively and evolved into the process used by adults. Determining the areas of the brain responsible for learning, however, has been hampered by a lack of evidence showing where language is processed in the developing brain.

To find out whether the mechanism of learning language is similar or different for babies and adults, researchers from California used magnetoencephalography in combination with high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to noninvasively study the word-selective brain activity in 12 to 18 months old infants.

It was found that babies just over a year old process words they hear with the same brain structures as adults, and in the same amount of time, combining the cutting-edge brain scanning technologies. It was also found that babies were not merely processing the words as sounds, but were capable of grasping their meaning.

According to the researchers, babies use the same brain mechanisms as adults to access the meaning of words from what is thought to be a mental database of meanings, a database which is continually being updated right into adulthood.
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