**Born to Learn: Language, Reading, and the Brain of the Child**

**Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl**

Co-Director

Center for Mind, Brain, and Learning

University of Washington

Seattle, WA. 98195

Voice-mail: (206) 221-6473

FAX: (206) 221-6472

E-mail: pkkuhl@u.washington.edu

**Paper Presented at the Early Learning Summit**

**for the Northwest Region: Boise Idaho**

June 9-10, 2002

The research described here is supported by grants to Patricia K. Kuhl
from the National Institutes of Health, the Human Frontiers Science
Program, the William P. and Ruth Gerberding Professorship, and by major
support to the Center for Mind, Brain, and Learning from the Talaris
Research Institute.

**Born to Learn: Language, Reading, and the Brain of the Child**

• I want to thank First Lady Laura Bush, and Idaho's First Lady Patricia
Kempthorne, as well as the First Ladies of the Northwest Region. I also
want to thank the sponsors of the conference, the Talaris Research
Institute of Seattle, Washington and Albertsons. The conference is
important because it highlights the country's most precious resource,
our children.

• I'm delighted to be here today to talk about early learning and the
brain. It's an extraordinary time in this field. In the past decade,
genetics and the genome project, biotechnology, and computer science
have witnessed explosions in scientific information. In this decade,
that kind of information explosion is taking place in the field of early
learning and brain development in infants and children. This is creating
a new science of learning, and the new science of learning is changing
how we view the child's developing mind, and how we view a child's
education.

• There are three factors contributing to this.

![](media/image1.wmf){width="2.4in" height="1.8034722222222221in"}

**Slide 1: Academic, Society, and Business Interest in**

**Cognitive Development**

• Academic: The 1990s was the "Decade of the Brain." New technology was
developed that allowed scientists, for the first time, to examine a
living brain. It's not always been like this. When I was a graduate
student we only had access to the secrets of the brain when it was
sliced and stained. Now, we have all seen magazine articles picturing a
brain that is "lit up" while its owner thinks, looks at a picture, or
listens to music. While I talk, I know which areas of your brain are
activated. The new techniques are revealing, in a tangible way, how the
brain really works.

• Society: At the same time, studies of infants and children are showing
that they learn more, and learn earlier, than we ever imagined. They
learn in novel ways that we hadn't predicted or expected --- I'll
provide an example shortly. Studies show that from the earliest ages,
childrens' brains code information that they see and hear. This happens
automatically. These findings have been picked up by magazines,
newspapers, and television documentaries --- everything from CNN to the
Nature channel --- and the public has a voracious appetite for it.

• Business and industry have also taken notice of the new information
about early learning. They know that childrens' learning will be
influenced by technology and the products that business provides.
Education itself is undergoing a major transition, which is changing the
face of the classroom.

• These three factors all contribute to our fascination with childrens'
learning.

![](media/image2.wmf){width="2.3965277777777776in"
height="1.7965277777777777in"}

**Slide 2 \-- Four topics (Early Learning, Reading, The Brain, and New
Partnerships)**

• My goal today is to tell you about four new developments that make a
difference to children (slide 2). First, I will describe new studies
that reveal the incredible early learning skills that children possess.
Second, I will tie infants' early language skills to reading readiness.
Third, I will describe the developing brain. And fourth, I will describe
new partnerships between researchers and educators that are bringing the
research results into the nation's classrooms. There's a big gap between
the neuron and the chalkboard, but the bridge can be crossed if the
right people work together.

![](media/image3.wmf){width="2.5083333333333333in"
height="1.8777777777777778in"}

**Slide 3 \-- The baby**

• Studies of infants and young children show that learning doesn't begin
the day children enter school for the first time. Learning doesn't begin
in first grade, or in Kindergarten. Learning begins in the first months
of life. And parents, or caretakers, are our children's first teachers.

**Language Learning**

• The chief example I'll use today is language acquisition. We are
beginning to understand exactly how infants go about learning language.
We've discovered that they learn a great deal in the first year of life
before they can speak. Very relevant to today's discussion is the
discovery that the fundamental steps in language acquisition play a
critical role in the ability to read. I'll use this as my primary
example, but there are also other examples from cognitive and social
development studied by my colleagues at the Center for Mind, Brain, and
Learning. Language, social, and cognitive development follow the same
path; studies on language provide a window on the developing mind.

• Language is made of building blocks --- the consonants and vowels that
make up words. Every language uses a unique set of building blocks. Our
studies show that, at birth, infants are what I like to call "citizens
of the world." Early in life, infants can hear differences between all
the consonants and vowels (the "building blocks") used in any language.
Their abilities far exceed our own. As adults, we are no longer
"citizens of the world." We are "culture-bound" listeners. We can hear
distinctions between the sounds used in our own language, but have
difficulty with the sounds of other languages, such as Mandarin or
French. Infants initially can hear distinctions that we no longer can
hear. But in order to learn a specific language, children have to learn
the specific set of sounds used in that language. English is not
Japanese.

• My studies show that infants begin learning the building blocks of
their language very early. I conduct studies in many different countries
--- Japan, Russia, Sweden, Finland, and France, and test infants and
children from zero to five years of age. We have learned that by the age
of 6 months, infants recognize the sound units used in their particular
language. By 6 months, infants raised in Sweden respond in a special way
to the vowels of Swedish, and do not respond in that way to the vowels
of English. American infants in Seattle do the opposite \-- they respond
to the vowels of English rather than those of Swedish.

• The studies show that early in development the infant brain is mapping
the patterns of language --- by 6 months, individual vowels and
consonants, by 9 months, the patterns of words. Many studies show that
the infant brain is unconsciously calculating information about
language. Infants are behaving like a computer without its printer
hooked up --- they store millions of bits of information before they can
speak, simply by listening, and this tunes the infant brain to English
rather than French or Russian. They do this incredibly early. Infants
are mastering language simply by listening to us talk.

• I want to show you how we conduct the studies on infants. In this test
a 6-month-old sits on his mother's lap and is entertained by a person
holding toys. At the same time, a sound in the background repeats, like
/a, a, a/. The baby's job is to listen for the sound change and turn her
head toward the loudspeaker when the sound changes. Let's watch this
little one and see how she does.

![](media/image4.wmf){width="2.55in" height="1.9194444444444445in"}

**Slide 4 -- Movie Showing an Infant Being Tested**

• That was a really good baby, and as you can see, she's also having
fun.

• As the infant brain starts to master its own language, something
interesting happens. Infants begin to ignore the sound differences that
are not relevant to their language. I'll show you the results of a
recent study I completed on discrimination of American English sounds
/r/ and /l/. These two sounds are distinguished in English (in words
like "rake" and "lake"), but they are not in Japanese. Japanese people
have a great deal of difficulty with these two sounds, just like we do
when we listen to a foreign language.

![](media/image5.wmf){width="2.5277777777777777in"
height="1.8888888888888888in"}

**Slide 5 \-- American and Japanese Babies at 7 and 11 months**

• Infants in the US and in Japan were tested on these sounds at two
ages, between 6 & 8 months, and again between 10 & 12 months. As shown
in the slide, between 6 and 8 months, infants from the two countries are
equally good at this task \-- performing well above chance. But by 10-12
months, just two months later, a big change has occurred. Infants in the
US are getting much better at it, while the infants in Japan are
considerably worse. What has happened in this short period between 8 and
10 months?

• What's happening is that the infant brain is focusing on what they are
hearing --- their native language. The infant brain no longer responds
to foreign languages they have not heard. Japanese babies no longer
respond to the change from /r/ to /l/. Their ability to hear
foreign-language sound distinctions has declined. They are becoming more
adult-like and lose their status as "citizens of the world." They become
more culture-bound, just like us. This specialization is essential for
language learning, and illustrates how powerful early learning is.

• These results raise a question: What happens if we expose American
infants to a new language --- like Chinese --- during this period of
rapid learning? Can we reverse the decline typically seen in foreign
language speech perception if we expose infants to the foreign language?
Can we keep the baby brain open to the sounds of foreign languages? We
recently tested this idea in the laboratory. We brought American infants
into the laboratory and my Chinese graduate students played and talked
with them while speaking Chinese. The babies came into the lab for 12
play sessions. After the 12 sessions, we tested infants in the US and
Taiwan on Chinese sounds used in Chinese but not in English.

![](media/image6.wmf){width="2.4034722222222222in"
height="1.8069444444444445in"}

**Slide 6 \-- Impact of Chinese and English play sessions on Perception
of Chinese Sounds**

• The results of the study were pretty amazing. After our Chinese play
sessions, The American infants reversed the typical decline seen in
their ability to hear the sounds of Chinese. The message is clear ---
the brains of infants code and remember the patterns they hear ---
before they speak their first words, before they understand any words.
The brain is at work early in development analyzing language. The brain
is like a computer being programmed before the printer is hooked up.
There is a tremendous amount of information stored in the infant brain
that is revealed only by the studies.

**•** These studies show that the brains of infants are altered by
listening to us speak. What kind of language do we use when we speak to
children and what role does it play in their development? We use what
has been called "Motherese," or, now that we know fathers do it too,
"Parentese," or, because you don\'t have to be a parent to produce it,
"Caretakerese." Parentese is a unique, rather silly sounding kind of
speech we use when we talk to children. This slide shows the pitch of
the voice used by a mother as she speaks to another adult and as she
speaks to her 2-month-old infant.

![](media/image7.pct){width="2.5in" height="1.875in"}

**Slide 7 -- "Motherese" or "Parentese" speech**

**•** It\'s definitely not your job interview voice. But infants and
children love it. If you allow a young child to choose whether to listen
to women speaking Parentese vs. those same women speaking to other
adults, they will choose Parentese every time. It's the signal they
prefer.

**•** Parentese not only sounds better to infants and children, it
teaches them something. Parentese contains exaggerated, exceptionally
well-formed phonetic units, more so than adult-directed speech. Language
input to infants is an enriched signal that makes it easier for children
to learn.

**Language and Reading**

• I've described how young children tackle language while they are still
in the crib. What is the connection between these early skills and
reading? Studies now show that children who have specific language
problems (that means language problems in the absence of mental
retardation and other cognitive factors) often have difficulty learning
to read. Language and reading requires getting the sounds sorted out
correctly. While typical readers can hear the differences between the
"p" in "pat" and the "b" in "bat" or the "t" in "tall" and the "d" in
"doll," children with reading difficulties have trouble with this. There
is some evidence to suggest that exaggerating the sounds, just as we do
when we speak Parentese to infants, can help older children with reading
problems.

• Diagnosing children with reading problems may be easier in the future.
Our studies now show that infants' abilities to distinguish speech
sounds at 6 months of age correlates with later language abilities. The
better infants are at distinguishing the building blocks of speech, the
better they are years later at other more complex language skills.

![](media/image8.wmf){width="2.4069444444444446in"
height="1.8069444444444445in"}

**Slide 8 \-- Early Speech Discrimination Predicts Later Language**

• Since early speech skills predict later language skills, and since
infants with later language problems have difficulty with the sound
contrasts used in language, there is enormous hope that these tests will
allow us to identify, very early, children who are "at risk" for later
language difficulties. Early identification allows intervention.

**The Developing Brain**

• I'd like to turn to the brain itself now. When you understand that
infants are the best learners in the universe, you start to ask,
"what\'s going on up there?" As I mentioned, the new technology allows
us to see brains at work. Well, we are beginning to see the infant brain
at work, and there's no more fascinating brain than that of the young
child.

![](media/image9.wmf){width="2.51875in" height="1.8993055555555556in"}

**Slide 9 \-- Synapse Formation at Newborn, One Year, and Two Years of
Age**

• The interesting thing about the infant brain is the fact that it forms
its connections after birth. The trillion or so neurons that we all have
in our brains are largely in place at birth, but they can't talk to each
other until they form neural connections that allow electric impulses to
flow between them --- think of telephone lines connecting houses. These
telephone wires, or synapses, begin networking in a complex and
interesting process, after birth. As this slide shows, the brain of an
infant has relatively few synaptic connections between the neurons.

• In the first years of life, up to age three, the brains of children
are forming connections furiously. Newborns have relatively few. By one
year, they have many more, and by the time they approach the age of
three, the child has twice the number of connections as the adult brain.
Furthermore, the synapses create three times more brain activity than in
an adult. Infants have far more synapses --- more connections --- than
they will ever need. Once the brain is fully wired and all the
connections are formed, the brain begins to "prune" excess connections.
Quite literally like a rose bush, pruning some connections helps
strengthen others. This pruning process continues to sculpt an
individual's brain until the end of puberty. The brain is being sculpted
by experience during the entire period from early infancy to the end of
puberty and it is important that parents and educators know this.

• We know that the brain cells and connections eventually reflect the
individual information stored in each brain. We cannot as yet know how
the brain codes the fine detail that infants and children are
processing, but new studies do show a strong correlation between what we
measure behaviorally and what we measure in the brain itself.

![](media/image10.wmf){width="2.4069444444444446in"
height="1.8069444444444445in"}

**Slide 10 \-- Baby Brainwaves**

• The infant's brain by measured by examining brain waves as the baby
plays, looks at his mother, or listens to language. This baby is
listening to language and has no idea that we are recording the
brainwaves he creates as his brain works away. We can see how his brain
responds to new information, like a new language. The tests show that
early in life, the infant brain is very plastic and readily learns new
information. This plasticity is remarkable and we believe it will lead
to new ways of understanding how children best learn.

**New Partnerships**

• My final point relates to the new partnerships that are forming
between researchers, business leaders, educators, and government
agencies. When I met President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush in 1998,
he was still the Governor of Texas. The First Lady of Texas was holding
a conference to talk about the issues we are raising today. We talked
together about the new research and what was needed to bring this
information into the schools --- how we might bridge the gap between the
neuron and the chalkboard. We also talked about the need to link
research to education --- neuroscientists and developmental scientists
had to get together with parents and teachers, those on the front lines
of education. In order to do that we would need support not only from
the NIH and NSF, but also from the private sector. We now see that all
across the nation, private groups are beginning to step forward. It's
made an incredible difference, and we are very grateful.

![](media/image11.wmf){width="2.4069444444444446in"
height="1.8034722222222221in"}

**Slide 11 -- Partnerships**

**•** The new partnerships are dedicated to the scientific research, but
also to disseminating that research. The public needs to know what the
science shows about how kids learn, and people also need to know what
methods don't work, or what science hasn't yet tested. It's as important
to explain that "Parentese" helps infants learn as it is to say that
showing flash cards to a 5-month-old WILL NOT cause them to read any
sooner. The goal, in fact, is not to make kids learn (or to read) at
earlier and earlier ages, but to help all kids develop to their
potential. Again the research indicates that normal language interaction
--- talking, reading, and playing with kids --- produces the brain
changes I described. This kind of learning is entirely natural --- it
doesn't require fancy software. The research that underpins this
understanding is needed to help direct policy in this area. We need to
communicate information from the nation's research laboratories to
society.

**•** At the University of Washington in Seattle, with the help of the
Talaris Research Institute, we have formed The Center for Mind, Brain,
and Learning to make scientific discoveries and to disseminate them to
parents, childcare workers, educators, and government agencies. The
mission of our center is to conduct world-class research on early
learning and the brain. Some of the specific research is supported by
federal grant agencies such as NIH and NSF. But our goal is not only to
make scientific discoveries. In partnership with the Talaris Research
Institute we will disseminate the findings to parents and educators, and
to the public at large.

**•** It is an extraordinary time, one in which great advances in the
science of learning will take place. It will be a good decade for all
our children. As represented by the President and First Lady, and the
Governors and First Ladies of the Northwest states, our leaders have a
longstanding commitment to education, especially those critical early
years. We think that the coming years will be a dynamic and crucial time
for scientists and practitioners in the field of early learning and the
brain. Cooperation between basic scientists and people in the applied
areas will show us how children learn, "what works," and we can then
begin to make policy decisions that are based on science, rather than
opinion. Science-based policy decisions offer the best chance of helping
this country's most precious resource, our children.

**[Background Reading]{.underline}**

**(1) Scientific articles by Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl show how important
learning and early experience is to language development. Four excellent
papers on early learning, language, and the brain are:**

**Kuhl, P. K., Williams, K. A., Lacerda, F., Stevens, K. N., & Lindblom,
B. (1992). Linguistic experience alters phonetic perception in infants
by 6 months of age. *Science*, 255, 606-608.**

**Kuhl, P. K., Andruski, J. E., Chistovich, I. A., Chistovich, L. A.,
Kozhevnikova, E. V., Ryskina, V. L., Stolyarova, E. I., Sundberg, U., &
Lacerda, F. (1997). Cross-language analysis of phonetic units in
language addressed to infants. *Science*, 277, 684-686.**

**Kuhl, P. K. (2000). A new view of language acquisition. *Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences*, 97, 11850-11857.**

**Kuhl, P. K., Tsao, F. M., Liu, H. M., Zhang, Y. & de Boer, B. (2001).
Language/Culture/Mind/Brain: Progress at the Margins Between
Disciplines. In A. R. Damasio (Ed.). *Unity of Knowledge: The
Convergence of Natural and Human Science* (136-174). New York: The New
York Academy of Sciences.**

**(2) There is a new book published in 2001 that supports the idea that
children (from birth to three) are born to learn. It is called, *The
Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells us About the Mind*, by
A. Gopnik, A. Meltzoff, and P. Kuhl (Harper-Collins). The book describes
how infants develop knowledge of language, objects, and people. The book
discusses children as \"little scientists\" striving to understand the
world around them.**