The Infant Language Centre at IIT Bombay’s department of humanities and social sciences will start a study this month which will focus on unearthing the techniques used by children in learning a language.
“This centre is the first of its kind in the country to study the very early stages of language development in young children. Our focus is on early word learning and the strategies infants adopt to learn words,” said IIT-B professor Vaijayanthi Sarma, who will head the research.
The centre, which started with a pilot project three years ago, has now set up a laboratory and will initiate the project from November end, covering children up to the age of four. It will work in collaboration with Infant Studies Centre, department of psychology, University of British Columbia (Vancouver).
“Language behaviour is common across countries and we want to find out strategies used across cultures. while, our department will concentrate on either Hindi or Marathi-speaking children, our counterparts at the University of British Columbia will conduct the experiment on English-speaking kids,” Sarma said.
Identifying the developmental stages in language acquisition, ways in which babies listen and react, the cues they take and the effect it has on them will be primary focus. One long-term application is to find out ways to aid teaching for those who are disabled, and to look at corrective measures.
“Even before knowing what kind of disability a child has, one must know what normal ability is and only then can we suggest corrective measures. We want to know how one can enable learning in those who are unable to do so naturally,” Sarma explained.
