It’s the Beat, Baby: Updates on Rhythm in Early Language Acquisition

Researchers have long known that infants perceive and respond to the rhythms of human speech well before they grasp the sound or meaning of words. As far back as 1988, studies have shown that newborns and 8-week-old infants could tell the difference between their home language and another language based on rhythmic cues (Mehler et al., 1988). Infants can also detect the intervals between vowels and consonants—and because these intervals differ from language to language, even young infants show a preference for the rhythms of their home language (Gasparini et al., 2021). 

Furthermore, infants seem to be able to distinguish between speech and non-speech rhythms. For example, EEG data in one study showed that 8-week-old babies could discriminate between the rhythms of repeated syllables and drumbeats (Gibbon et al., 2021).

New studies are exploring how these rhythmic skills relate to overall language development. Some suggest that an infant’s ability to track rhythmic speech may predict later language abilities.   

Tracking the Bouncy Rhythms of Nursery Rhymes

In a 2022 study, researchers examined EEG data on 4-, 7-, and 11-month-old infants as they listened to nursery rhymes. Why nursery rhymes? Because their patterns of stressed syllables emphasize word boundaries. And nursery rhymes can be sung or chanted to enhance their rhythmicity. Data from all 3 age groups showed that nursery rhymes produced a synchronized response in brain activity, indicating that the infant brain was paying attention to the rhythms even though the babies could not yet understand the words (Attaheri et al., 2022).

In a follow-up study, researchers measured language acquisition for the same group of children using infant-led measures and parent estimates. Differences in how the infants responded to sound were associated with their language outcomes (Attaheri et al., 2022). 

More recently, researchers in the BabyRhythm Project at the University of Cambridge found that 7-month-old infants listening to nursery rhymes were building new capabilities on the foundation of their rhythm knowledge. They were beginning to encode phonetic information—categories of specific sounds—in addition to rhythmic information (DiLiberto et al., 2023). Researchers say putting rhythm information and phonetic information together could be the start of understanding where words start and stop in the baby’s home language.  

Rhythm Response as a Biomarker for Dyslexia

How an infant responds to different rhythms may someday be used as a clinical biomarker to help practitioners predict reading and language difficulties later. We’re not there yet: The process of identifying dyslexia does not yet involve brain activity data. Still, researchers are exploring these links through a number of recent studies.

For example, in several studies, dyslexia was associated with a difference in the ability to process the low-frequency sound information associated with speech (Molinaro & Lizarazu, 2018; Keshavarzi et al., 2022). To process speech efficiently, neurons must fire at an optimal moment in response to sound stimuli. In children with dyslexia, the neurons have a different preferred firing phase—making language processing less efficient and possibly less accurate (Keshavarzi et al., 2022).

Differences in rhythm processing have also been linked to developmental language disorder (Ladányi et al., 2020). Researchers say evaluating rhythm response could someday become part of the screening process for developmental language and reading conditions.  

The Key Message: Early Language Exposure Matters

Children who hear more adult talk tend to vocalize more themselves. Researchers used machine learning to analyze over 2,500 day-long audio recordings of the natural environments of children from 2 months to 4 years old. They found that the amount of adult speech children heard predicted the amount of speech they would create. These results were consistent across lots of different environments—urban and rural, in 12 countries, and on 6 continents.

In addition, researchers found that a child’s early speech-like vocalizations were a good indication of how much language the child knew, not just how “chatty” a child was (Bergelson et al., 2023). All of this confirms the importance of early speech and language exposure, whether it’s through song, infant-directed speech, or the baby-friendly beats of Mother Goose. 

If you work with young children, whether in early intervention programs or early education, WPS is pleased to be able to support your efforts with validated assessments, training, and other resources.