Infants Learn Word Patterns in their First Year

New research from the University of Notre Dame validates a core concept of Helen Doron Early English: teaching language to children as young as 3 months.

Jill Lany, assistant professor of psychology and director of Notre Dame's “baby lab”, studies the way that babies learn language. Her current studies suggest that newborns, less than a year old, learn to track word patterns and detect syntactical clues to help them acquire and understand new words. She says, "My research suggests that there are some surprising clues in the sound stream that may help babies learn the meanings of words. They can distinguish different kinds of words like nouns and verbs by information in that sound stream."

Professor Lany gives the example of the phrase, “it’s a”, as a clue that babies learn to recognize. In this case, the clue tells them that the next word is an object.

This research supports the basic methodology of Helen Doron Early English: to teach children as early as possible, and to incorporate the English language into their natural environment.

You can read the full article at Science Daily, or at Notre Dame News.

Here is a video interview with Professor Lany, at the Notre Dame Infant Studies Lab: