Summary of TedTalk Video : Linguistic of Genius Babies by Patricia Kuhl

Patricia Kuhl and her colleagues have exposed babies to different sounds and „rewarded“ them (they are allowed to watch a cute teddy bear drumming on a plastic drum), if they have recognised and turned their head to a new sound. At the age of about 6-8 months, the babies could recognise all the sounds of all languages perfectly. Already at the age of 10-12 months they had “zeroed in” on their own language and were only able to distinguish the sounds of that language, but no more those of other languages.

For example, when Japanese babies were examined in comparison to American babies, they were on the same level with how well they could distinguish the English sounds r and l at the age of 6-8 months. After 10-12 months, the American babies had zeroed in on the r and l sounds and could distinguish them better than before. However, the Japanese babies had zeroed in on Japanese, in which language these sounds do not occur in the same form, and were significantly worse at distinguishing the r and l sounds.

As a subsequent attempt, Kuhl and her colleagues placed American babies, in the critical period between six and ten months, in the laboratory with a Mandarin native speaker who spoke and read to them for 12 sessions. Afterwards these babies were just as good at distinguishing two Mandarin sounds as Taiwanese babies that had been exposed to the language for 10 months.

Kuhl describes the babies as little statisticians who „zero in” on sounds that are often presented to them. If they are exposed to Mandarin sounds they learn to distinguish them just as well. Fascinatingly, the sounds have to be presented to the babies by people. When the babies only heard the sounds on the television or over the radio for 12 sessions, there was no improvement of the recognition of Mandarin sounds at all.