A new research was made by the University of Pennsylvania that reached to that babies can understand some basic words at the age of six months not 12 months as it was believed before. The research proved that the babies can understand the words that their mother mention.
In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, 33 infants aged six to nine months were tested on their understanding of common nouns, such as foods or body parts, alongside 50 children aged 10 to 20 months.
The children were shown a screen showing two images, such as an apple and an arm, and asked by their mother where one of the objects was.
Researchers tracked the infants’ eye movements and found that 26 of the 33 six to nine-month-olds tended to glance at the correct image with a frequency that was unlikely to be down to chance.
Results from the same test on older children showed that there was no significant improvement between the ages of six and 14 months, when levels of understanding improved rapidly.
In a second test the children were asked to locate an object in the context of a scene rather than in isolation, such as a banana on a dinner table containing other types of food. Results showed that children could locate at least some of the tested words in the scene.
While there was another new research done by Charles Sturt University in Australia, proved that the babies can make jokes before they can start talking. The Research was done by Jennifer Sumsion the professor of early childhood, strapped small cameras to baby’s head whom are their age is between 6 and 18 months old.
It was found that young babies, less than 18 months old, were able to communicate with each other through gestures, noises and shared play. The babies interacted with each other through making eye contact, subtle gestures, reaching out, and even using humor.