Infant Language Study

We are forming a special study group limited to 40 infants. To have your child enrolled, just e-mail us or call us at (800) 872-5244 and give us your name, address and the age and name of your infant (must be under the age of 2). Being part of the study group allows you to communicate with others in the study group.

As of March 22, 2008, there are 31 participants in 3 countries. Currently no paperwork is required of parents as we have not yet found a director for the study. For now, participants in the study are asked to do what everyone else is asked to do -- just play the CDs for an hour or two each day for their child.

If you speak a “foreign” language with an accent, it seems that you probably acquired this “problem” when you were between 6 and at least 12 months old. This is the time during which the brain is being hardwired to remember the unique sounds of the languages which are heard.

This concept has been put forward by the authors of “The Scientist in the Crib” (Dr. Gopnik, et al). Therefore we propose that a new event be created -- a party for infants when they reach that special benchmark of 6 months of age. This new event is called an Akilo Party (see the home page for more information).

Experts agree that there is a need for an infant to hear a language frequently in order to begin to master it -- but no matter what, it sure seems nice to emphasize this special time in a child’s life.

Prof. Adarsh Sandhu (at a Yokohama university) has noted that children and adults of all ages generate a broad range of brain wave responses when hearing a familiar language and that these responses were not obtained when unfamiliar languages were heard. Multilingual subjects generated these responses for all of the familiar languages which were heard. He has published these results. For these tests he used our standard audio language-strings. It appears that this methodology can be utilized to test for familiarity with given languages for young children in a multilingual setting.

If you are just interested in raising your child (under the age of 2 and preferably from birth) with your native language and one other language, the following should work well -- (1) on a daily basis, for the second language down load (by satellite) TV programming in that language -- for 4-5 hours every day (the more variety, the better), (2) hire a nanny who is a native speaker in that language to come in an sing lullabyes and interact with the child for at least 2-3 hours a week. By age 4-5 your child should have as good a mastery of the language as a child of the same age raised in a country in which that language is the native language. The nanny should only speak the second language in the presence of the child.

In theory, you could have two nannies and two sets of 4-5 hour daily TV down loads, each in a different language, and thus have a trilingual child.