Study Finds Babies Learn to Talk By Reading Lips; Could Offer Clues to Autism

For years, the conventional wisdom was that babies learned how to talk by listening to their parents. But a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that our little angels are using more than their ears to acquire language. They’re using their eyes, too, and are actually pretty good lip readers.
The finding could lead to earlier diagnosis and intervention for autism spectrum disorders, estimated, on average, to affect 1 in 110 children in the United States alone.
In the study, researchers from Florida Atlantic University tested groups of infants, ranging from four to 12 months of age and a group of adults for comparison.