婴儿的语言天赋

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Your baby's language skills may surprise you. Before they speak—before they even crawl—infants can distinguish between two languages they've never heard before just by looking at the face of a speaker. And if they're raised in a bilingual household, they retain this ability for a long time, according to research presented here today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW).

华盛顿报道——你家宝贝的语言能力可能会吓到你。在婴儿会说话之前，甚至在他们还不会爬的时候，他们就能够靠看着说话人的脸来辨别两种不同且从未听过的语言了。而且根据今天在美国科学促进协会（《科学此刻》出版方）年度会议上的研究显示，如果婴儿是在双语家庭长大，他的这种能力将能保持很长时间。

It might seem like all babies think about at 8 months is food and diapers. But it's actually possible to measure their interest in other topics. Developmental psychologist Janet Werker of the University of British Columbia in Canada shows babies videos and uses "looking time"—the amount of time they spend looking at the video—as a measure of what they're interested in.

看起来，八个月大的宝宝们似乎满脑子想的都是食物和尿布。但是事实上，要度量他们在其它事物上的兴趣是完全可能的。来自位于加拿大英属哥伦比亚大学的发展心理学家珍妮特·威尔克向我们展示了关于宝宝们的视频，并且用“注视时间”，即他们花在看镜头上的时间来度量他们对哪些东西感兴趣。

In a recent experiment, Werker and a colleague from Barcelona measured looking time in 8-month-old Spanish babies. Some were born in homes in which only Spanish is spoken, some in homes who residents only spoke Catalan (a romance language spoken in northeastern Spain), and some in bilingual homes.

在最近的一项实验中，威尔克和她一位来自巴塞罗那的同事对八个月大小的西班牙宝宝做了注视时间测量。其中一些宝宝出生在只说西班牙语的家庭，另一些出生在只说加泰罗尼亚语的家庭（加泰罗尼亚语：西班牙东北部使用的一种罗曼语），还有一些宝宝出生在说这两种语言的双语家庭。

The babies were shown a video of three women who were bilingual speakers of French and English—languages the babies didn't know. Each woman was shown in turn saying sentences in one of the languages. Eventually, the baby got used to this and got bored. Then the language changed. Monolingual babies took no notice, but bilingual babies started looking at the video again. Other studies have shown that monolingual babies make the distinction until they are 6 months old.

The findings indicate that as babies learn to discriminate the two languages they're familiar with—Spanish and Catalan—they aren't just learning the specific rules of their two mother tongues. They're actually learning something more general about what makes languages different. Monolingual babies lose this skill over time.

The new work fits in with other research on bilingualism, including some discussed at the same press conference by psychologist Ellen Bialystok of York University in Toronto, Canada, showing that people who speak two languages are stronger at important cognitive abilities like complex thought and controlling attention. Bilingualism even seems to delay the onset of dementia in old age.

这一新发现和一些其它关于双语的研究结果相符合。这其中包括加拿大多伦多约克大学的心理学家艾伦·比亚韦斯托克在新闻发布会上的一些讨论，表明掌握两种语言的人在复杂思考和注意力保持等重要的认知能力上要强于他人。双语能力似乎还能够延迟老年痴呆症的发病时间。

Werker doesn't know yet exactly what the babies are seeing in the faces of the speakers. But English and French do look different when spoken. "French, for example, has many more rounded vowels. As one of my friends says, it looks like French people are always kissing you," Werker says. "They may also be paying attention to the simple rhythm of your jaw opening and closing, the whole ensemble of muscle movements in the face."

威尔克还不是清楚地知道宝宝们（在看视频时）是否是在看说话者的脸。不过英语和法语在发音时口型确实不同。“比如说法语，有很多圆唇元音。就像我一位朋友所说，法国人说话时好像是一直在亲吻你，”威尔克说，“另外宝宝们可能也关注你下巴开合的节奏和整体的脸部肌肉运动。”