New Research Shows Babies Employ Many Tricks to Pick Up Language

Sitting in a dim laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University, David Wiggs peers at a flashing red light and listens intently to a series of sentences playing over a loudspeaker.

"Fluid ice is a difficult concept to grasp. Merchants used to trade ice for water. Weird ice no longer surprises anyone. The experts soon detected that it was flawed ice."

The words could be the rantings of a glaciologist on acid, but David doesn't raise an eyebrow. For this blue-eyed infant, the strange

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