Children Learn New Languages More Easily Than Adults

Other, less tragic kinds of evidence also support this idea. Most people have a much more difficult time learning a second language late in life than they do in childhood. Immigrants may try to learn the language of their new country, only to be outdone by their own children. When we visit a foreign country for a while, our kids seem to be happily chatting with the other kids in the playground, while we are still painfully looking through the phrase books. When we learn a second language past...

 Babies Flirt

There are other reasons to think that even very young babies are especially tuned to people. Babies flirt. One of the great pleasures in life is to hold a three-month-old in your arms and talk absolute nonsense. "My, my, my," you hear your usually sane, responsible, professional voice saying, "you are a pretty bunny, aren't you, aren't you, aren't you, sweetums, aren't you a pretty bunny?" You raise your eyebrows and purse your mouth and make ridiculous faces. But the even more striking thing...