Contrast objects help to learn sounds

This week, I stumbled upon the website of the Psychology Department at the University of British Columbia. Their infant studies provide some amazing information about bilingual babies, as well as about language acquisition in general. Their research is fascinating. Today, I just wanted to talk about one particular discovery - how babies acquire sounds, specifically those sounds that are similar, but different.


For example, in English, short and long vowels sometimes change the meaning of a word, in Russian, however, the length of a vowel is not important. The ability to differentiate similar sounds is the key to comprehension of any language, so the babies must be learning that early if they understand you before they can talk to you. Well, the folks at the UBC have discovered that babies use visual clues to remember all those sounds. And, logically, the visual reminders of different sounds should be very different from each other, so that a child could see the difference. Basically, contrast objects like a bear vs. a pear make it easier for a child to remember contrast sounds.

I have read that in the morning and, in the afternoon, we went to the Denver Public Library to look at some extra baby books. See, I have plenty of books in English and in Russian at home, but they are a little bit advanced for Sasha, and he easily gets bored with "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" or with "Telefon" (by K.Chukovsky). I also noticed that he pays more attention to books that offer clear pictures with contrast objects, especially if objects don't overlap. So, I often read American books to him, but in Russian. I just pick simple, easy books, with one or two words per page and translate as I go.

Coming back to pear vs. bear, today I found a book called "Orange Pear Apple Bear" by Emily Gravett. The books has just 5 words - orange, pear, apple, bear, there. Through combination of those words, a child is supposed to learn sequences and shapes. I was thinking, it would be also nice to learn the sounds. However, the bear in the book keeps shape-shifting into oranges, apples and pears, and everything in the book is in pastel colors. No to that one.

My favorite ones are "Baby Happy Baby Sad" by Leslie Patricelli and "Baby's very first mealtime book" published by Usborne. Those books offer great contrasting images and I already confirmed with Sasha that it is easy to distinguish between a spoon and a banana if they are painted in such different colors. I think this information could be useful even for those parents who want to help their child to learn just one language.