sciencetech-blog

comments

It's already been proven that cooing at a newborn baby is a vital part of teaching them to speak.

Now, scientists claim that talking to babies gives them advantages in life far beyond a larger vocabulary.

They say that chatting to babies under the age of one, helps them make friends, as well as making them brighter because they are better able to discover the world around them.

Scientists claim that talking to babies (illustrated with a stock image) gives them advantages in life far beyond a larger vocabulary. They say that chattering to babies under the age of one, helps them make social connections, as well as improving their cognitive ability

In recent years, there have been many studies about the 'word gap' – the idea that parents in impoverished homes speak less to their children, leading to their kids not achieving as much as they might at school and earning less in later life.

But Sandra Waxman, a psychologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, said: 'It's not because [children] have low vocabularies that they fail to achieve later on. That's far too simple.'

'The vocabulary of a child - raised in poverty or in plenty - is really an index of the larger context in which language participates.'

In a study published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, she and Athena Vouloumanos of New York University advocate talking to babies.

Dr Vouloumanos believes this is important not only because it teaches them more words, but because 'listening to speech promotes the babies' acquisition of the fundamental cognitive and social psychological capacities that form the foundation for subsequent learning.'

The researchers say that babies who have been exposed to more human speech are better than their peers are listening to interesting sound, which allow them to pick people with whom they can communicate, as well as more easily absorb information about the world around them.

Professor Waxman told MailOnline that babies who are 'clued in' to language are better able to absorb information about objects and events in the world around them (illustrated with a stock image)

Professor Waxman told MailOnline: 'Because they [babies] are so "clued in" to language, when they are listening to language, their attention to objects and events in the world is heightened.

'This heightened focus, or attention, promotes rapid learning and discovery.'

She continued: 'These new results…tell us that infants as young as 2 or 3 months of age not only love to listen to speech, but that they learn about fundamental cognitive and social relations better in the context of listening to speech than in any other context we've discovered yet. 

'Nobody would have thought that,'

'This early tuned sensitivity to human language has positive, cascading developmental consequences that go way beyond learning language.'

...CHATTER IS FOUR TIME BETTER AT IMPROVING A CHILD'S COMMUNICATION SKILLS THAN READING, STUDY CLAIMS 

Irish researchers who conducted a study on the impact of bedtime reading on 7,845 nine-month-old infants, found that absent-minded conversation was four times better at improving a child's communication skills than reading to them or showing them pictures.

In the study, 94 per cent of infants had a parent show them pictures; 80 per cent of nine-month-olds were read to and 66 per cent of mothers reported always talking to their children.

Irish researchers who conducted a study on the impact of bedtime reading on 7,845 nine-month-old infants, found that absent-minded conversation was four times better at improving a child's communication skills than reading to them (illustrated with a stock image) or showing them pictures 

Researchers at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) found that as well as communication skills, chatting to children was three times better at improving problem solving skills.

Suzanne Egan, a lecturer in psychology at University of Limerick's Mary Immaculate College, told Eithne Shortall at the Sunday Times that she was surprised by the results.

'We would have thought that there might have been a good effect of reading, perhaps more so than the talking,' she said.

She said that it's easier for many parents to talk to their children regularly than devote all their attention and time to reading a book.