McGill study explores how infants respond to different languages

With the help of a small skateboard, Arabelle crawled towards sounds coming out of a speaker in McGill’s Baby Lab.

The nearly two-month-old infant is a participant in a study about early language learning.Her parents are on board too.

“Babies’ brains are very… Well, they’re pretty amazing,” says Arabelle’s mom Natasha Teixeira-Patry.

The researchers are trying to show that infants recognize familiar and unfamiliar languages.The babies hear sentences in English, French or Mandarin, while six sensors attached to their legs and back measure muscle activity.

“So English, she was more calm,” says Teixeira-Patry. “French she was more active. And Mandarin, she was somewhere in the middle, which is interesting because she had never been exposed to Mandarin before.”

The researchers say babies are primed to learn languages from birth. Arabelle already has billions of neurons forming pathways for language processing.

As she gets older, her brain will strengthen connections for sounds she hears often.For babies in bilingual homes, the study could reveal which language resonates more, says lab director Linda Polka.

“Will they maybe tune into one language and respond to that one, before they respond to the one they hear less?”

She says even at one or two months old, trying to crawl is more than a reflex -- it’s intentional.

“It shows that even though babies may look like they’re not doing anything…they have some abilities, and they’re learning,” Polka says.

The techniques to test how babies this young are tuning in to the world around them are few Polka adds.

This approach could unlock new possibilities, but the researchers need more participants.

Parents who are interested in taking part in the research have until August and can find information here.