preverbal
pree-VER-bul
Definition
Referring to a developmental stage in human infants before they have acquired the ability to speak or use language.
Etymology
Derived from the Latin 'prae' meaning 'before' and 'verbum' meaning 'word', combined with the English suffix '-al' to form an adjective describing the period preceding speech.
In the news
In the article, the term describes infants who cannot yet communicate verbally, necessitating the use of indirect experimental methods like visual recognition tests to measure their memory.
Scientists long blamed infantile amnesia on an immature hippocampus that couldn't properly make memories. Then researchers scanned the brains of 26 babies and found the memories being encoded. The problem may not be making our earliest memories
Read the full article ↗ScienceBlog.com