When you next hold a baby, don't be taken in by its helpless demeanour, lolling head and milky mouth. Behind the cherubic face is a sophisticated data processor capable of understanding complex rules and structures.
Evidence is growing that babies arrive pre-programmed with certain abilities. A new report suggests babies as young as seven months have an understanding of language that is sophisticated enough to look for grammatical rules in sentence construction.
The research contributes to the continuing argument among linguists over whether children learn the rules of language by imitation and memory or are substantially helped by being pre-programmed at birth. The paper, from Gary Marcus and colleagues at the Department of Psychology at New York University, comes close to endorsing the view first put forward in the 1950s by Noam Chomsky that babies are born with innate language skills. Babies gradually learn to fit their parents' language into this linguistic hardware package.Marcus put 16 seven-month-old infants in front of speakers with flashing lights. Out of the speakers came sequences of three-word sentences from a made-up language. Babies heard sentences of one of three structures; 'wo fe fe' (an ABB structure) or 'wo fe wo' (ABA) or 'wo wo fe' (AAB).
They then heard new sets of three-word sentences, with half the babies hearing the old structure and half being given a new one. Marcus found that over 90 per cent of the babies recognised structures they had heard before and paid more attention (measured by the number of seconds they stared at the flashing speaker) to sentences with unfamiliar structures.
Critics of the paper say this merely shows babies recognise familiar patterns. Previous research also shows babies pay more attention to something different. They will, for example, look longer at a picture with three objects than two.
But Marcus believes his findings are a breakthrough for the 'innate ability' school of linguists, that the skill is statistical in nature and that babies are capable of doing 'algebra' with words. The building blocks of sentences, nouns, adjectives and verbs are analogous to the x , y and z of an equation. 'Infants can derive abstract equations and can substitute words into these equations. This enables them in this study to recognise the difference between a new sentence with a structure they had heard before and a new sentence with a new structure. 'It means babies are looking for regularities in the world and that they can learn about abstract things.'
The search for regularities may not be confined to words. Marcus aims to conduct studies using musical tones or pictures. Ideally this work would lead to the earlier identification of children with language problems such as those who are slow to talk or develop autism. At the moment Marcus is keen to point out that his research shows how well young babies can learn.
'Whatever learning device the children are using, it points to one that is inbuilt,' he says. 'The study shows that babies are active learners, trying to figure out what is going on. No one was rewarding them for learning in this study - they are just made that way. Parents should appreciate how sophisticated a baby is.'
It is increasingly hard for parents to do otherwise as tests of cognitive ability make child development increasingly more accessible to study. Jan Parker, author of Raising Happy Children (to be published in May by Hodder & Stoughton at £9.99), says that since the late 1960s psychologists have been eroding the myth that a child's first positive communication is a smile at six weeks.
'They have shown that the skills of communication exist by one month,' says Parker. 'Children will track their parents with their eyes, and the way they look and follow people is different to the way they look at objects. There is a video, made by Professor Colwyn Trevarthen, a child psychologist at Edinburgh University, which shows a two-month premature baby mimicking his father's cooing and changing his pattern as his father does. If parents knew this, they would treat their baby as a communicating being rather than a blob.'
Research by Janet Werker and Richard Tees, psychologists at the University of British Columbia in Canada, shows that four-month-old babies respond to the sounds that make up syllables, such as 'b' and 'a' however they are prounounced in any language. By 10 months they pay less attention to the foreign sounds.
The brain can now be seen at work through Positron Emission Tomography (Pet) scans which measure oxygen and glucose consumption. The brain of a newborn is most active at brain-stem level - the area responsible for heart rate, breathing and primitive responses such as the grasp reflex.
New-born babies seem comical, with their uncontrolled limb movements and rubbery facial expressions. But by two months their movements will be more purposeful and controlled and they will smile and coo. Oxygen and glucose consumption gadually move up into the higher centres of the brain - reflected in an eight-month-old baby's ability to babble a lot and reach for objects.
The combination of these tests and scans shows the baby brain as a powerhouse of activity. And if, as Marcus's work suggests, some of the intellectual wiring is already in place, parents may want to stop going 'ga ga, goo goo' and start discussing the pros and cons of monetary union.
Yet Dr Lucinda Carr, a consultant neurologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, says this ability to recognise language patterns does not mean we should think of babies as terribly clever.
At seven months, a baby is still at a fairly primitive stage of its development, she says, and we should rely on instinctive behaviour. 'Parents babble back to their children naturally - they instinctively mirror their baby's behaviour,' she explains. 'Communication is a human strength. Babies know how to draw people into their world. Initially they demand by smiling and then smile and coo, which adults reciprocate.
'There is no evidence that overloading babies with information works. Children who are brought up bilingual often have a six-month delay in their language development and this may be because of overloading.'
The instinctive way that parents talk to babies - 'parentese' - is higher pitched, rhythmic and uses shorter words than adult conversation. Adults naturally put their faces close to babies to talk to them. Research from Stanford University indicates parentese is a worldwide phenomenon and that a baby of 10 months responds to a command in parentese, such as 'look at the picture', faster than in normal language.
Parker warns against parents trying to manipulate such insights. 'Knowing how language develops is inspiring, but you shouldn't over-analyse it or you will put too many things in the way of interacting with your child. It can, however, be empowering to appreciate that your baby is a communicating person when you have been wearing a track in your carpet trying to stop them crying.'
The fact that babies may be born wired for learning language should not suggest anything about their intellect. 'This is nothing to do with intelligence,' says Parker. 'It's to do with relationships and learning social communication. It is much more about having fun and sticking your tongue out with your baby than anything that can be measured in terms of success in later life.'
INTELLECTUAL MILESTONES
THREE TO FOUR MONTHS
* Turns head toward bright lights or colours
* Turns toward human voice
* Responds to sound of rattle by kicking legs
* Plays with fingers and toes
* Cries with tears to show pain or loneliness
* Responds to peek-a-boo
SEVEN TO EIGHT MONTHS
* Cries in different ways to show pain, loneliness, hunger
* Focuses on small objects and reaches for them
* Looks for ball or toy that falls out of sight rather than instantly forgetting about it
* Babbles in a talking tone
* Responds to own name
* Smiles at reflection in mirror
* Responds to others' distress by being upset
TWELVE MONTHS
* Says first word
* Imitates human behaviour such as talking on telephone
* Scared of strangers and likes to see parent all the time
* Waves bye-bye
* Pushes away unwanted objects
