Practice Makes Perfect May Apply to the Way Babies Learn to Talk

By Jill ElishMarch 2002

FSU STUDY: FOR SONGBIRDS, PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

Similar Effect May Apply to the Way Babies Learn to Talk

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.-If humans are anything like songbirds, a new Florida State University study suggests the old adage "practice makes perfect" may apply to learning a language.

FSU psychology professor Frank Johnson has found that songbirds that practice their songs more often as juveniles have the highest quality songs as adults. The study, published in the March issue of the journal Behavioural Brain Research, is the first to purport there is a practice effect in songbird vocal learning and that a similar effect may apply to human vocal learning.

"If what we have seen in songbirds generalizes to humans, it's possible that the amount an infant vocalizes each day may have a significant impact on the quality of language learning," Johnson said. "Humans and birds both go through a very similar series of behavioral stages as they learn to vocalize. However, to my knowledge, no studies have examined the question of vocal practice in human language development. One problem is that it is difficult to quantify vocal production. There also is a tendency to view language learning as special and not subject to conventional rules of learning."

Johnson, research colleague Ken Soderstrom and doctoral student Osceola Whitney study vocal learning in zebra finches because, like humans, they must learn to vocalize in order to communicate with each other.

As a young bird, the zebra finch learns to identify, memorize and learn to imitate the particular song of an adult. Human infants are confronted with a similar task as they learn the language that their parents speak. The initial vocal patterns of zebra finches, termed subsong, begin about one month after the birds hatch. Subsong is comparable to an infant's babbling phase where the vocal sounds do not really resemble speech at all, Johnson said.

When they are between 40 and 50 days old, the birds transition to a phase called plastic song, where individual note types become recognizable but the sequencing of the notes remains variable. This is comparable to the period when children develop a kind of fragmentary speech in which grammatical errors are common, but normal speech sounds are being produced.

Vocal patterns crystallize as the birds reach adulthood when they are about 3 months old, meaning that song learning is complete. Birds that practiced the most during the plastic song phase had the highest quality songs as adults.

Using a computer controlled real-time recording system, the researchers measured the number of times that juvenile birds sang per day as they were learning to sing. They also measured how often they sang as adults after song learning was complete.

The results showed that as juveniles the birds typically produced morethan twice as many songs per day than they did as adults, which is consistent with the idea that they were, in fact, practicing. Moreover, birds that practiced the most during the phase of plastic song had the highest quality songs as adults. Based on the data gathered, Johnson estimated the birds practiced their song at least 50,000 times as they were learning it.

"That's a pretty big number and one that is interesting given the ongoing debate about the respective roles of learning versus maturation in human language development," Johnson said. "Our data suggest that learning the motor gestures of speech may be similar to other forms of motor learning, like figure skating or playing a musical instrument. If you want to be good at it, you are going to have to practice - a lot."

# # #