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Infants' use synchronized visual information to separate streams of speech
One of the earliest hurdles for infants acquiring a language is learning the ability to follow one speech stream over others. This statement was one that professors George Hollich, Rochelle S. Newman, and Peter W. Jusczyk set out to explore. Could the importance of your baby's need to see your face when learning new words be confirmed? Can greater closeness between you and your child really encourage language acquisition? The study investigates.
Professor Hollich's research asks the question of how young infants acquire their first language. This includes both how they hear and remember the words of their native language; their understanding of how what they see can be segmented into meaningful objects, actions, and events; and the process by which young infants learn to connect these two.
An extract of Professor Hollich's study can be read below along with a link to the complete article.
Q: What were the main findings?
A: When it is noisy, infants use what they see to hear better. More specifically, 7-month-olds use the motion of the face or other simultaneous movement to focus their attention on one person's voice over others.
Q: Can you describe the study?
A: We played 7-month-olds a video of a woman speaking while a boring male voice was droning on in the background at the same volume. We then tested infants on whether they had heard any of the words that the woman was talking about. When the face matched the voice, infants could pick out individual words. When we played a freeze frame of the video or a video of a face that didn't match the audio, infants didn't succeed in our task. Interestingly, infants were able to hear better even if we just played them a wiggly line that matched the woman's voice (not unlike HAL in 2001 or KIT from Knight Rider). So infants likely can use any simultaneous movement to help them hear better - even gestures, or head movements.
Q: How could infants answer if they don't talk?
A: We used a procedure called the head-turn preference procedure. In the procedure, infants sat on their parent's lap in the center of a three-sided booth with lights on each side. The lights flashed while words from the video were played. Infants looked longer at the lights when the words that they had recently heard were played back. So, for example, if the lady in the video had been talking about a dog, infants looked more when the word "dog" was played. When infants didn't look more, we assume it is because they couldn't pick out that word in the video. Naturally, we had to test this many times with many different words and infants to be sure it wasn't boredom or something about the specific words that made infants fail.
Q: How could infants answer if they don't talk?
A: We used a procedure called the head-turn preference procedure. In the procedure, infants sat on their parent's lap in the centre of a three-sided booth with lights on each side. The lights flashed while words from the video were played. Infants looked longer at the lights when the words that they had recently heard were played back. So, for example, if the lady in the video had been talking about a dog, infants looked more when the word "dog" was played. When infants didn't look more, we assume it is because they couldn't pick out that word in the video. Naturally, we had to test this many times with many different words and infants to be sure it wasn't boredom or something about the specific words that made infants fail.
Q: Why did we do this?
A: We were concerned that babies' lives are often anything but quiet, and we wondered what infants do to cope with noise and distraction. As my two-month-old would tell you: It is noisy out there! Whether from parents talking, siblings shouting, tv/radio, or even those "soothing sounds" CD's popular with the baby Einstein set, children frequently hear speech in distracting circumstances. We asked how children deal with distraction. Our answer is that infants don't deal with distraction very well. When someone else was talking at the same volume or higher, 7-month-olds were completely unable to pull out individual words UNLESS they could see the face of the speaker or other movement simultaneous with their speech.
Q: Why is this important?
A: This is the first study to show that infants' cope with noise by looking. What infants see is just as important to helping them understand as what they hear.
Q: What does this mean for parents?A: It doesn't mean that parents should be seeking absolute quiet. I don't know about your house, but that's probably impossible in mine. Life is noisy. While it is probably a good idea to try and minimize some distractions (such as background TV), there will always be some extraneous sounds when we are talking to our children. To compensate, speak clearly; speak loudly; AND make sure your children see you.
Relevant link: http://hincapie.psych.purdue.edu/HollichNewmanJusczyk.pdf
Author: George Hollich (Purdue University), Rochelle Newman (University of Maryland), & Peter Jusczyk (Johns Hopkins University)
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