From the Toronto Star: Thinking before you speak.
Posted on August 1, 2004 12:02 AM. Filed under: language.Baby may not be saying much at five months but she could be thinking deep thoughts.
Researchers have found that five-month-old babies can comprehend concepts for which they have not yet learned words, thus answering the age-old question: Which comes first, an idea or the language to express it?
"How do we think about the world before we are corrupted by culture and the world?" asks Yale University psychologist Paul Bloom. "One way to learn is to look at babies.''
Researchers at Vanderbilt University and Harvard University found that 5-month-old babies being reared in English-speaking homes were able to grasp the difference between a loose fit and a tight fit — putting a pencil into a plastic cup, for instance, versus stacking a second cup inside the first.
That distinction is important in the Korean language but absent from English. By showing that babies growing up in English-speaking homes are sensitive to the distinction, the researchers demonstrated that some forms of thinking do precede language. [continue]