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US researchers suggest that social interaction is a vital component of developing an ability to learn languages and that artificial means of language learning are not as effective. The researchers believe this is a clue to understanding how exposing an infant to a foreign language at an early stage affects their ability to perceive the phonetics of the language. Dr Patricia Kuhl, a neuroscientist from the University of Washington, and colleagues, found that nine-month-old American babies exposed to Mandarin Chinese delivered by a human for less than five hours in a laboratory were able to distinguish phonetic elements of the language. However, another group of American infants exposed to Mandarin on DVD or audiotape under similar conditions showed no ability to distinguish its phonetic units. The study tested the infants ability to distinguish Mandarin sounds that do not appear in English by looking at how they reacted to sounds by the way in which they turned their heads. The researchers said their results demonstrated the importance of the time-frame within which infants are exposed to a foreign language, with nine months being a particularly sensitive period. Dr Kuhl said, The findings indicate that infants can extract phonetic information from first-time foreign-language exposure in a relatively short period of time at nine months of age, but only if the language is produced by a human, suggesting that social interaction is an important component of language learning. She added that the studies suggested how language learning draws on all aspects of infants cognitive abilities, including the ability to follow the gaze of another person to an object to understand what they are talking about. The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver, Colorado. Source: American Association for the Advancement of Science source: BBC News Online, 19/2/2003