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The Bulletin
A year-old baby sits in a brain scanner, called magnetoencephalography—a
noninvasive approach to measuring brain activity. The baby listens to speech sounds
like “da” and “ta” played over headphones while researchers record her brain
responses.
Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, UW
revealed that infants raised in bilingual households had increased
brain activation in areas involved in executive function.
2
Encompassing such advantageous mental skills as problem solving
and flexible thinking, executive function is a desirable cognitive ability.
The study used a whole-brain MEG analysis comparing brain activa-
tion in response to hearing different language sounds in monolingual
(English) and bilingual (English and Spanish) 11-month-old infants.
“Our results suggest that before they even start talking, babies
raised in bilingual households are getting practice at tasks related
to executive function,” said lead author Naja Ferjan Ramírez, a
research scientist at I-LABS. “This suggests that bilingualism shapes
not only language development, but also cognitive development
more generally.”
The study also revealed that bilingual babies were learning English
at the same rate as their monolingual peers. This means they had
no trouble keeping track of two languages, which is a concern some
parents of bilingual children have. This finding suggests that when
tracking language development, it is important to consider gram-
matical and vocabulary gains made in both languages combined in
order to get an accurate picture of a child’s language development.
And for the increasing number of children in the United States
raised in homes where a language other than English is spoken,
Ferjan Ramírez says it’s important for infants to hear whatever
language their caregivers feel most comfortable speaking, and
lots of it. She encourages parents to read to babies in their home
language, even if the books they have are in English. Having a
strong foundation in at least one language is essential to children’s
language development. Children are incredibly good at learning
a second language. And those children who have a good grasp
of their native language are likely to easily learn English in school
and from their friends and teachers.
Social interactions are key to infant learning
Babies aren’t passively learning from what they see around them.
Instead they learn best through social interactions with caregivers.
When I-LABS researchers gave babies tutoring sessions in a foreign
language, the babies only learned if the lessons were with a live
tutor—not from a video or audio recording.
3
One possible explanation for this is that the infants’ own social
skills play a role in their learning. In a study published in summer
2015, I-LABS researchers linked an early social behavior called
gaze following with the amount of learning babies achieved in
foreign language sessions.
4
Gaze following is like shining a spotlight on what is important in
the world. A caregiver makes eye contact with a baby, then looks
at something nearby. The baby will then turn her head to look too.
Through this joint attention, caregivers can name what they see,
such as “Look at the red ball.”
Infants begin to show gaze following at around 10 months of age.
I-LABS research has found that the more infants do it, the bigger
their vocabularies are as toddlers. Caregivers can help babies learn
language by first making eye contact with the child, then looking and
pointing at what they are talking about. Pointing and looking helps
the infant zero in on the object of interest, and helps them asso-
ciate the caregiver’s words with a specific object, action, or person.
It’s not just language skills that get a boost from gaze following.
I-LABS’ Meltzoff and Rechele Brooks, an I-LABS research scien-
tist, discovered that later in childhood infants who showed more
gaze following end up with a greater ability to see the world from
another’s point of view—a type of social cognition researchers
refer to as “theory of mind.” Brooks and Meltzoff reported these
longitudinal findings in a study published in February 2015, which
began when the children were 10.5 months old and ended when
the children were 4.5 years old.
5
Gaze following is a form of joint attention, a social-communica-
tive skill in which two or more individuals use gestures and gaze
to share interest in the same object or topic. Joint attention plays a
key role in language and social development. Because challenges
with joint attention are an early sign of autism spectrum disorders,
gaze following has become part of ASD diagnostic screens and
behavioral interventions.
2.
http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/04/04/bilingual-baby-brains-show-
increased-activity-in-executive-function-regions/
3.
http://ilabs.washington.edu/kuhl/pdf/Kuhl_etal_PNAS_2003.pdf
4.
http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/07/27/babies-brains-show-that-social-
skills-linked-to-second-language-learning/
5.
http://ilabs.washington.edu/i-labs-news/understanding-eyes-understanding-
minds-%E2%80%93-tracing-building-blocks-social-cognition
baby brain, cont.
