It turns out that all that playful gibberish we say back and forth to our little ones isn't falling on deaf ears; new research shows that having conversations with your tot — yes, even if it’s just gibberish — can give them a leg up in playschool onwards.

 

Why? Because it helps their brain development and can better their abilities to learn languages, according to a new study from Science Daily.  

 

Yep, it turns out all that joyful goo-ing and ga-ing doesn't just sound utterly darling, it's actually aiding the construction of language in your baby's brain, pretty much as soon as mum starts doing it. New research shows that babies organise mothers' verbal responses, which in turn promotes more effective language instruction, and infant babbling is the key to this.

 

So, to find out how or why specific types of babbling are good for both baby and parent, researchers recorded and recombined the vocalisations of 40 nine-month-olds and their mothers, using a "playback paradigm."

 

Babies were recorded interacting with their mothers during a playtime session and researchers found that the more mums interacted to the babbling of their child, the better it was for them in terms of development.  "The increased rate of response meant more language-learning opportunities for the baby," explained researcher Michael Goldstein, associate professor of psychology at Cornell University. 

 

 

The researchers also found unsurprisingly, that mums responded more often and more informatively their baby's babbling when it was directed at specific objects and thing as opposed to random outbursts.

 

"The object the baby is looking at creates an opportunity for the mother to label it, so she's more likely to respond with specific information - that makes more sense to the baby - than when a baby is babbling at nothing," the study authors continued. 

 

This means that not only does the baby talk spoken by the mum influence the tot, but how he or she vocalises the gibberish helps, in turn, structure mum's response in a way that facilitates a better learning environment for the baby.

 

Scientists have long known the power of simply of talking to babies — the earlier the better. The study sheds light on previous links between early babbling and later language and studies finding that babies with more advanced syllables in their babbling have more advanced speech and vocabulary when they're older. That’s in part because early experiences shape how the brain develops in those critical first years of life.

 

So, mums, go forth and babble to your heart's content. Your little one just might thank you for it in years to come. 

Latest

Trending