Increasingly sophisticated neurological research is yielding new, and sometimes surprising, insights about the ways in which infants process, understand and begin to use language. 

A study from Dublin ‘underscores the importance of parents talking and singing to their babies as much as possible, using rhythmic speech patterns such as those found in nursery rhymes. This could significantly influence language outcomes, as rhythmic information serves as a framework for adding phonetic information’.

---

Read more:

Di Liberto, G.M. et al. (2023) Emergence of the cortical encoding of phonetic features in the first year of life | Nature Communications, 14(7789). DOI.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43490-x

For a less detailed technical explanation of this new research, see: Dolan, E.W. (2023) New neuroscience research upends traditional theories of early language learning in babies. DOI.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43490-x

To understand the context in which this research is being undertaken, visit the Baby Rhythm Project at University of Cambridge Centre for Neuroscience in Education: https://www.cne.psychol.cam.ac.uk/babyrhythm-project 

For a helpful 3-minute overview and to see babies in extraordinary brainwave sensing headgear, visit: https://youtu.be/_UaOO_dkccQ