A new research has revealed that diverse neighborhoods may help in infants’ social learning.
In a new study, UChicago psychology researchers investigated whether the variety of languages in infants’ neighborhoods affected their willingness to learn from people who are different from them.
Lead author Lauren H. Howard said that they were interested in linguistic diversity, that is, how many different languages babies might hear.
Howard added that babies in their study heard only English from their parents and caretakers, but they lived in neighborhoods where multiple languages were spoken.
Howard continued that their findings showed that hearing those languages outside the home, for example at the park or on the bus, made infants more open to learning from someone who did not speak English.
Researcher Amanda Woodward said that the study provided evidence that infants’ social learning was shaped by the diversity of the neighborhood in which they live, even if they didn’t have direct interaction with people who spoke other languages.
The study is published by the journal Cognition. (ANI)