Hear about new research showing that when adults hear babies gurgle “goo goo ga ga,” we instinctively change the way we speak to help infants learn language faster.
For years, experts have been telling parents that encouraging your baby’s goo-goo-ga-ga-ing from an early age is essential for establishing the foundation for a strong vocabulary. Now, new research has confirmed that it’s not only babies who are influenced by all that baby talk— parents’ speech is affected too.
When a baby looks over at you all wide-eyed and utters some incomprehensible babble, we instinctively respond in our best baby talk. And when we do, according tofrom Cornell University’s Behavioral Analysis of Beginning Years Laboratory, we unconsciously modify our speech to include fewer unique words, shorter sentences and more one-word replies. It turns out, all of that helps infants pick up language faster.
Researchers say these “conversations” are actually baby’s way of shaping their own environment to make learning easier for them. In other words, infants aren’t babbling just to babble. Babies are actually “talking” to adults to get them to talk back—in a way that’s more understandable for them—so they can get a better grasp on language.
Elmlinger and his team studied 30 mother-infant pairs engaging in free play over two consecutive days. The babies wore hidden wireless microphones to record their speech and were videotaped. During that time, researchers observed that when a parent adjusted their speech to use shorter, more simplified sentences to respond to their child’s babbling, their infant learned more sounds the following day.
“It’s not meaningless,” Elmlinger said. “Babbling is a social catalyst for babies to get information from the adults around them.”. Your little one will be chatting your ear off before you know it.
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