Researchers from Purdue University in the United States analysed the language development of nearly 50 four-month-olds while they listened to a continuous stream of nonsense words as they sat on their parent’s lap.
The children were split into two groups. The first group were touched on their knee every time a nonsense word such as ‘dobita’ was spoken. This process was repeated two dozen times.
The word ‘leopga’ was also played 24 times to the same children, but they were only touched on one occasion. Researchers touched children another 23 times but during other syllable sequences.
Following this, the four-month-olds participated in a language preference study, in which the majority of children pulled ‘dobita’ out of the continuous stream of speech.
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