Born to Be Linguists: The Extraordinary Speech Processing Capacities of Newborns

Have you ever had a conversation in front of a newborn? Afterwards, did you ever wonder whether they understood anything you said? Did they interpret your speech as meaningful or as nonsensical sounds? It turns out that infants begin to process and make inferences about speech from birth, and they even come with some knowledge of language built in.

Let’s run a mini-test. Suppose you were asked to choose between the following 3 one-syllable “words” as a potential new entry in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary: gilf, lgif, gfil. Which one would you select? Most of us pick the first example, gilf, where the syllable begins with a consonant-vowel sequence. You’re not alone: the preference has been demonstrated by speakers of many different languages! Despite differences in the sounds they use, adults from various language backgrounds process gilf as a more likely word, over lgif or gfil (Berent et al., 2008). Maybe even more surprising, two-day-olds demonstrate the exact same preference! This is strong evidence that humans are sensitive to syllable structure from birth, no matter which language they are learning (Gómez et al., 2014).

Although some things newborns know about language from birth are universal, their preferences and expectations about language are also shaped by the specific language they hear. Newborns can even tell the difference between the language that they heard in the womb and other languages! How do we know this, you ask? In a study by Christine Moon and colleagues, two-day-olds whose mothers spoke only English during their pregnancy had an opportunity to listen to either English or Spanish speech. These tiny tots systematically paid more attention to English speech than to Spanish. This suggests that even before we’re born, we are able to keep track of the features of the languages we hear– in this case, the rhythm and pitch patterns of English. We can even detect neural signals in newborns that show this same pattern: for instance, newborns who heard French in the womb showed stronger brain responses to French than to other languages one day after birth! Babies come into the world already “tuned in” to some of the languages they are most likely to hear during their early lives (Moon et al., 1993; Mariani et al., 2023).

So, infants really are born to process language! They even learn a little about language while in the womb, so maybe we should say *gestated* to process language. Upon quite literally “entering into the world,” their skills are put on full display for all of us to see and appreciate. One of the things that is so incredible about babies is how fast they learn language — and no wonder, since they waste no time figuring out the patterns in the world. You, too, can witness this, as soon as an infant utters their first cry.

References

Berent, I., Lennertz, T., Jun, J., Moreno, M. A., & Smolensky, P. (2008). Language universals in 

human brains. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(14), 5321–5325. 

Gómez, D. M., Berent, I., Benavides-Varela, S., Bion, R. A., Cattarossi, L., Nespor, M., & Mehler, J. (2014). Language universals at birth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(16), 5837-5841.

Mariani, B., Nicoletti, G., Barzon, G., Ortiz Barajas, M. C., Shukla, M., Guevara, R., … & Gervain, J. (2023). Prenatal experience with language shapes the brain. Science Advances, 9(47), eadj3524.

Moon, C., Cooper, R. P., & Fifer, W. P. (1993). Two-day-olds prefer their native language. Infant Behavior and Development, 16(4), 495-500.