Rebecca Ivatts

Early Learning Centre

Rebecca Ivatts - Early Learning Centre

Early Learning Centre (2014)

Acrylic and mixed media on board, mounted on wood

84.1 x 59.4cm

A 3 or 4-month-old child can already distinguish between a 'p' and a 'b'. But is the linguistic brain a blank slate at birth? Recent research seems to support Noam Chomsky's long-held belief that, on the contrary, babies are born with an innate capacity for language. Chilean neuroscientist, David Gomez, has measured blood flow in the brains of 24 newborns listening to random syllables. They were more sensitive to syllables with well-formed sonority such as 'blif' than they were to those without logical sonority such as 'lbif'.