“We believe that speech rhythm information is the hidden glue underpinning the development of a well-functioning language system.”
Cambridge researchers recorded the brain activity of 50 infants at four, seven and 11 months while a teacher sang 18 nursery rhymes. Babies don’t reliably process individual speech sounds until about seven months. Rhythm comes first. That puts phonics-first theories of language learning on notice, along with decades of treating dyslexia as a phonetic problem.