Are people born with the innate ability to understand language? This is a question that scientists have long been interested in understanding. There are three main theories regarding how humans learn languages. The first theory suggests that babies learn a language like they learn any other skill: they observe others, they are praised for speaking correctly, and they are scolded for speaking incorrectly. The praise and scolding serve to reinforce grammatically correct speech while discouraging grammatically incorrect speech. The second theory states that babies will first babble and then speak because they want to interact with those around them. According to this theory, an infant’s environment will influence when they will start to speak and which words they will begin to say. The third theory is the theory of Linguistic Nativity, which suggests that there is potentially an area of the brain, referred to as the Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which controls language learning. Recent research has found a brain area that provides stronger support for the potential existence of the LAD and for the Linguistic Nativity theory.
New research shows that the VWFA in infants has connections to language centers of the brain prior to language exposure.
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Researchers at Ohio State University were interested in studying the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), a region located in the visual cortex at the back of the brain that is activated when a person sees words or letters. Specifically, the team was interested in seeing if newborn infants had VWFAs that were already connected to the language networks of the brain. The longstanding belief was that when babies are born, their VWFAs are no different from the rest of the visual cortex, and only when babies learned how to read and write would their VWFAs begin to make connections to parts of the brain that process and understand language.
The researchers tested this belief by performing fMRI scans on one-week-old infants and examining the area in their brains that would become the VWFA when fully developed. The scientists found that even in these one-week-old infants with little to no exposure to written language, their VWFAs already had some of the connections that adults would have in that area of the brain. This meant that unlike the prior belief that connections between language centers of the brain were only formed upon exposure to language, the VWFAs of infants seem predisposed to recognizing words and thus, learning languages.
By better understanding the structure of the brain as language is acquired, researchers hope to gain greater insight into how best to promote literacy, as well as how to identify and alleviate developmental disorders related to language.
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