Babies learn while asleep, study finds

Babies as young as two or three days old can be taught to distinguish similar vowel sounds while they are asleep, Finnish researchers have found.

After just one night of repeatedly hearing three sounds, infants were able to differentiate between them in a finding that showed it may never be too early to start teaching babies, scientists at the University of Turku in Finland said.

"We could use these results to begin to teach infants more effectively when they are very young," said Marie Cheour, the head of the research team.

The psychologist, who specialises in infants and language, said early learning could help to diminish problems in children who have a high risk of learning difficulties and to teach foreign languages more effectively.

"Babies can learn while sleeping. It only takes them about one night to distinguish sounds," she said.

Marie Cheour and her colleagues measured the infants' responses to the vowel sounds once they had woken up.

In the science journal Nature, they said the brain patterns of the infants indicated that they could distinguish the sounds they had been taught while asleep.

Babies have more active sleep than adults and their brains function differently, which Marie Cheour said could account for their nocturnal learning ability.

- REUTERS

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