Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another -- by listening to the humans around them and "taking statistics" on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.
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We seem to have a plethora of posts pertaining to Pure Pedantry's penchant for peroratory punditry. I found a recent press release that I fear will only encourage him.
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Here's a picture of our daughter Nora at about 3 months of age. She looks like she's fairly aware of the events going on around her (arguably more aware than she sometimes appears now, at age 12). However, as our knowledge of how infants begin to perceive the world around them has increased, we've…
[Originally posted on February 20, 2006]
Here's a picture of our daughter Nora at about 3 months of age. She looks like she's fairly aware of the events going on around her (arguably more aware than she sometimes appears now, at age 12). However, as our knowledge of how infants begin to perceive…
A study doesn't have to be brand-new to be interesting. Consider the situation in 1992: It was known that adults are much better at distinguishing between sounds used in their own language compared to other languages. Take the R and L sounds in English. In Japanese, both of these sounds belong in…
I found this to be somewhat disappointing. I was expecting a demonstration of statistical reasoning in infants (based on your comments), which would indeed have been amazing. If you merely replace the phrase 'taking statistics' with the word 'learning' throughout her talk you get precisely the same information about what is going on in infants' brainsânone.
But I did appreciate the demonstration that machine learning is not effective and that social brain processes have a necessary role in language development. Definitely worth posting.... thank you.
There's a longer (and wordier!) version of her talk that I included along with the one above on my blog, which contains a little more detail. It is a pity that she didn't explain what the importance of the "statistics" is. I thought to on my blog, but then didn't have time. Very basically, consider a stream of sound and trying to identify the recurring "motifs" that make up the basic linguistic elements. It's not quite the learning I think you mean, but using a sort of frequency analysis to pick out the "units" that language should be built upon.
Thanks Grant, sounds interesting. I'll check it out.
Jamie: (based on your comments) I made no comments. That's a quote from the source of the video, their phrasing. I tend to agree with you.
Grant, love your post.
grant love your post thank is it