Children as young as 13 months old can detect language differences, according to a recent study.
Researchers at the University of Auckland found that infant understand that people from different linguistic communities use different words to refer to the same object, according to a press release.
"By that age, infants understand that people who speak different languages do not use the same words in the same way," Annette Henderson of the Developmental Psychology department at the university said in a statement. "This is the first evidence that infants do not indiscriminately generalize words across people."
Using infants from English-speaking families in Auckland, the authors explored whether infants understand that word meanings (object labels) are not shared by individuals who speak a different language.
For the study, the infants were first shown video clips that introduced them to two actors speaking a different language; one actor sang popular French nursery rhymes and the other sang popular English nursery rhymes.
They found that infants apply the rules they have learned of their own language and expect speakers of foreign languages to label objects consistently, Henderson said.
"Infants do not expect to hear the French speaker to use the same label for two different objects."
Henderson said the study shows that infants have a fairly nuanced understanding of the conventional nature of language. Infants applied the rules they have learned of their own language and expect speakers of foreign languages to label objects consistently.
"People often think that babies absorb language and you don't have to teach them, (and they do absorb it and they learn very passively), but they're not just learning willy-nilly, they're being smart and making distinctions about the words they hear and use," she said.
