Question

An infant’s ability to differentiate the sounds of languages not their own drops off from 6 months to 1 year. What does this say about language development?

Answer 1

All the human beings have their own language learning area in the brain. The child starts to listen any language that is spoken by it’s mother right from the womb familiarizing itself to the sound. When it comes out, for the first six months, it can’t differentiate any sound and treats everything equal but from 6 months onwards it’s attention is focused on its mother tongue because the child is exposed to its mother tongue most of the time and if a new language is spoken, it can’t understand. It’s because until 6 months infants are Universalists and they are open for any language but afterwards they are inclined to one particular language. Another interesting fact is that children can any language quickly until the age of 7 and then the learning speed declines.