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<p class="headline">Baby babbling linked to brain's<br>
language center,<br>
not motor skills center <!--end headline--></p>
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<p>Whether baby babbling is fundamentally linguistic (absorbing the
elements of language) or just exercising motor activity (practicing
the mechanics of mouth movement) has never been effectively addressed.
Until now. A team of researchers based at Dartmouth has discovered
a strong link between baby babbling and the language processing centers
in the brain. </p>
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<p><img alt=""
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Professor Petitto works with 11-month-old Derrin Bilgili to
better understand how babies learn language and the brain's
processes that make this extraordinary feat possible. <br>
<small>(Photo by Joe Mehling '69.)</small> </p>
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<p>Laura Ann Petitto, Professor in Dartmouth's Department of Psychological
and Brain Sciences and Department of Education, and graduate student,
Siobhan Holowka at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, report their
findings in the August 30, 2002, issue of Science. </p>
<p>"This discovery is the first to demonstrate left hemisphere cerebral
specialization for babies' production of language, just like we see
in adults," says Petitto. "This suggests that language functions specialize
in the brain at a very early age."</p>
<p>The researchers found that babies babble with a greater mouth opening
on the right sides of their mouths, indicating left brain hemisphere
activity. They conclude that babbling engages the language processing
centers in the left hemisphere of the brain. </p>
<p>"Right mouth asymmetry" is the phrase used to describe the fact
that the right side of your mouth opens a tad wider than the left
while talking. Human eyesight (or how the brain perceives this act)
corrects for this disparity, so it is virtually unnoticeable. Researchers
have studied right mouth asymmetry in adults to understand the language
control centers in the brain's left hemisphere, a method proven useful
to detect brain damage after heart attacks or strokes. These studies
produce a "Laterality Index," which is a measure of the asymmetry.
Holowka and Petitto are the first to apply this measure to study language
in babies.</p>
<p>"We were trying to find a way to further study language development
in babies, but we needed a technique that would not be invasive or
upsetting," explains Petitto. "The Laterality Index was our answer."
</p>
<p>The researchers studied videotapes of 10 babies between the ages
of five and 12 months. Taking into consideration any language-specific
bias, five babies were learning English, and five were learning French.
On the videos, two independent coders who were unaware of the study's
goals scored randomly selected segments using the Laterality Index.
They focused on three different kinds of mouth activity: babbles (sounds
with consonant-vowel repetition), non-babbles (vocalizations without
consonant-vowel content or repetition), and smiles (mouth movements
with a known meaning or significance, generally indicating enjoyment,
and often accompanied by contractions around the left eye). By slowing
down the video recordings, the coders could calculate, using the Laterality
Index, the size and nature of the babies' mouth openings for each
of the different kinds of mouth activity. </p>
<p>"We found that all the babies, both English and French, had right
mouth asymmetry when babbling, equal mouth opening for non-babbling,
and left mouth asymmetry for smiles," says Petitto. </p>
<p>Not only do their findings link babbling to the language centers
in the left side of the brain, the results also suggest that a basic
expression of emotion, such as smiling, is linked to the right hemisphere's
emotional centers in the brain, just like adults. Again, this suggests
that sections of the human brain begin to specialize at a very early
age.</p>
<p>"We are currently exploring whether this baby-friendly research
method could also be used as a diagnostic tool to determine if there
are linguistic or developmental problems even before a baby can utter
its first word," says Petitto. "The sooner parents and pediatricians
recognize these problems, the sooner they can begin to treat them."</p>
<p>See <a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Elpetitto"
target="main">www.dartmouth.edu/~lpetitto</a> for more information, photos
and QuickTime movies. </p>
<p>This study was funded by grants to Petitto, including a grant from
Dartmouth College, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada, and The Spencer Foundation (United States).</p>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="$mailwrapcol">--
M. Hubey
hubeyh@mail.montclair.edu /\/\/\/\//\/\/\/\/\/\/http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~hubey</pre>
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