Infants Transfer Language as Young as 16 Months

Researchers have discovered when an important milestone in an infant's life occurs. The ability to use the same knowledge in different situations. In some studies, they found that 8-month olds have trouble using the same knowledge in different situations, but 16 month olds didn't seem to have any trouble. Sometime between 8 months and 16 months, the infant's learn how to learn. The lead author of the study, Julie Hupp, Assistant Professor at Ohio State University, Newark campus said.

Many scientist had thought the ability to transfer knowledge was a product of infant development. No research or testing had ever been done except for word learning..

Hupp did the study with the help of Vlamir Sloutsky, professor of psychology and Director of the Center of Cognitive science at Ohio State. '

In these studies, the scientist watched the infants to see if they had learned to pay attention to images shown to them on a screen in front of them. They also used flashed symbols, like squares, triangles, musical notes onto the screen.

Usually, the infant's will pay attention at first when the experience is new, but then will lose interest and look away, until the screen changes. They put a recorder under the screen to capture the infant's reaction to the screen, when they looked away, and the infant's looked back to the screen when it changed.

In the first experiment, the researchers wanted to know if the infant's were more likely to detect changes at the beginning or the end of the image sequence. Then they flashed the same green symbols over and over until most of the infant's got bored and started to look away. Then they added a new color to the beginning or end.

They found out that both the 8 month old group and the 16 month old group had preferred changes at the beginning. The researchers seen the infant's were more likely to notice changes at the beginning.

Then they wanted to train the infant's to pay attention to the end of the sequence.

In a new experiment, with new children, they showed a sequence of symbols on the screen, but the last symbol did something to catch the children's attention...it jumped or flashed, or moved side to side on the screen. After they had train the children to notice the ending, they showed them a entirely new sequence with no changes. The researches then noticed the children paid more attention the ending. because they had learnt to expect changes at the end.

Then the researchers added sound to the sequence, and did the same experiments over and over, changing one sound at the end. In the infant's were paying attention at the end of the visual sequence, they should have known the change in the audio sequence as well. The 16 month olds did just that. However, the 8 month olds didn't. The 16 month olds took what they learned from the visual experiment's and applied it to the audio. They transferred their knowledge, the 8 month olds couldn't do that yet.

Source
Infant's Language Ability