MRI studies of infant brains have been done, and they have found that language processing in newborns relies largely on the same brain circuits that adults use. Babies show the same patterns of brain activity as adults when it comes to distinguishing the native language from a foreign one.
5 comments:
When the child's first born I do not believe that they can tell if the mother is speaking two different languages, but as they yet older they can tell. When they are first born everything around the infant is new and don't quite understand what things are used for. This is just like if you were to go to another country, speaking a diiferent launguage that you dont under stand, you wouldn't be able to understand what was going on either.
Margot Madden
I think that when a child is born they are unconsciously aware that their mother is speaking two languages because they don't actually yet know how to speak and know consciously how to distinguish between them. With the studies it shows that they have the same brain patterns as adults so they would somewhat that two different languages are being spoken, however I don't think they would be a 100% aware that this is what is going on around them.
Whitney Crebase
I don't believe that babies born to bilingual mothers possess the ability to discriminate between two languages, at birth. When a baby is born the brain is not fully developed. As the baby will get older, its brain matures more and understands more.Like, Whitney said, if they were able to distiguish between two languages, they would be aware of what is going around them. When they hear the language they will have the same brain activity as adults because they both use the same parts of the brain for speech. But they will not be able to distinguish between the two langages.
Hannah T.
I agree with Whitney. I think that babies, on some unconscious level, can hear the difference between the two languages being spoken. I agree that they don't understand the languages but I can understand how this could make learning a language easier. Infants minds are like sponges, if they hear something they pick it up right away. I believe this could make it easier for them to become bilingual because at a young age their minds are just learning language and if you present them with two languages, it should be as easy as learning one.
I do not believe that babies can discriminate between both languages right at birth. But I do know that kids absorb a lot of information.So I beileve that it would be easier for a infant to pick up the languages at and young age since they have been around it for so long but not right when they are born.
~Hodan Musa~
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