Cmo aprenden los bebs
Translator: Gisela Giardino
Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
When I arrived in France to do my Ph.D.
I spoke French making lots of mistakes.
My words sounded awesome to me,
but not to the French people.
In particular, I had difficulty
with the expression “good luck”,
which is “bonne chance” in French.
So when I said goodbye to people,
I wished them with great excitement:
“bonne chance”.
However, many times,
they looked at me quite puzzled.
What happened was that my “bonne chance”
sounded a lot like “vengeance”.
And “vengeance” in French means “revenge”.
So instead of being
wishing “bonne chance”,
I was wishing them “revenge”.
However, my poorly spoken French
had its advantages.
Once a child had to undergo a surgery,
and he had epilepsy
in a region of the brain
linked to language.
We had to evaluate
if due to the operation
he had been left with difficulties
to understand the language.
So we had to perform a test.
And in that test we had to speak wrongly.
But speaking wrongly is hard
for someone who speaks well.
When we try to make mistakes
we stumble, it’s not fluent.
And if the child realizes
there are mistakes in the way you talk,
in the end, we cannot assess
if there is a problem with comprehension.
He might have got distracted
by the stumbles.
So that’s where my bad French
came to be of great help.
My mistakes came out most naturally.
Fluently, and I had
no difficulty making them.
So they asked me to talk to the child.
And if the child opened his eyes
wide open and said
“What does this lady mean?”
it meant he had been capable
of detecting the mistakes
and that his ability to understand
the language wasn’t that affected.
Back to my “bonne chance”,
I had a hard time with distinguishing
bilabial B from labiodental V.
The “B” of the “V”.
My ear couldn’t detect that difference.
Therefore, I could not pronounce it.
Incredibly, this
I couldn’t do as an adult,
I’m sure that at birth
I could do it with ease.
And not only could I tell
the “B” from the “V”,
but I could also differentiate
any of the approximately 200 vowels
and 600 consonants
that make up the thousands
of living languages in the world.
And I was not a prodigy.
All humans are born with that ability.
We can absolutely
distinguish all sounds,
from all languages.
Luckily, in the first year of life,
we lose this sensitivity
to distinguish sounds
that are not used in Spanish.
And I say “luckily”,
because otherwise, we wouldn’t be able
to learn the words in Spanish.
For example, in English, the “ch”
and the “sh” are distinct sounds.
It’s not the same to say “cheap”
than saying “sheep”.
If we kept that distinction in Spanish
we might think, for example,
that “Chile” and “Shile”
are different words.
We have to stop sensing that difference
in the distinction of words.
So “Chile” is going to mean the same thing
regardless of how we pronounce it.
So what’s the point of measuring
if we distinguish sounds at birth?
What’s the point of measuring
if we distinguish sounds
of speech at birth?
Our research
and research by other teams
show that, if at birth
children don’t distinguish well
the sounds of language,
they are more likely
to develop difficulties
in speech, in reading
and communication.
And speech, reading
and communication problems
have serious consequences
in children’s development,
ranging from stigmatization,
to school dropout and other failures.
Now, you may wonder how we measure
that children at birth
make these distinctions.
We do it by measuring the brain.
We make newborns hear sounds
such as “ba, ba, ba”,
and every now and then
we change it to “pa”.
And, if the child feels this difference,
there’s an activation in the brain
in language-related regions.
And we can measure that activity
in a way that doesn’t bother them.
They don’t even realize
they are being studied.
These skills children have
are present from
the sixth month of pregnancy.
And we know that
because when we study children
prematurely born of a six-month pregnancy
we find the same results.
And this is amazing.
Just look at how the brain is like
of a child at six months of pregnancy.
It’s smooth as a liver.
And yet it makes these distinctions.
In the next three months of pregnancy
the brain grows rapidly.
It grows so fast that
it doesn’t fit inside the head.
And it wrinkles like a walnut.
This explosive growth
is also accompanied
of a great expansion
in cognitive skills,
so we can think of this
like a cognitive big bang,
full of mysteries
that we should explore
to be able to better understand
human development.
Although these kinds of studies
detects at birth
children who are more likely
to present learning difficulties
at more advanced ages,
we’re not yet certain
of how to use this to help them.
However, it is very promising
to think that the fact
that we better understand
how a child learns
with such an immature brain
will leave us better prepared
to design better ways to teach them.
And that’s what we need you all for.
I say good-bye to you
as I did in France,
wishing you “bonne chance”.