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Babies Use Their Tongues to Understand Speech

A new study found that when infants can’t move their mouths to mimic sounds, they have a harder time processing them.

“Until now, research in speech-perception development and language acquisition has primarily used the auditory experience as the driving factor,” Alison Bruderer, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral fellow in speech sciences at UBC, said in a statement.

“Researchers should actually be looking at babies' oral-motor movements as well.” Even before they’re talking, in other words, they’re turning snippets of language around in their mouths like Cheerios, trying to figure them out.