This week’s theme is interactivity

Children learn in a different way when they are socially engaged – hearing many words isn’t enough, little ones need to be part of the conversation. You don’t have to wait until your little one is talking to engage them in a back-and-forth interaction. This week we will share information about different ways your little one learns from interactivity, and how you can boost interactivity in your interactions.

Read more about interactivity basics

 

Topic of the Day: Babbling 😮

Learning to talk is hard, and it takes a lot of time. When children are born, they don’t know how grown ups communicate with one another. When a little ones see two people talk together, they can learn important things about communication among humans: First, when one person makes vocal-sounds, another person will often show signs that the sound affected them – they might smile because someone said something nice, they might turn and look in a different direction because someone told them about something exciting, they might make their own vocal sounds in response, as part of a back and forth interaction. When babies can see this kind of interaction between people, they learn that making sounds is important in our communities. In families with normal eyesight and hearing*, watching others interact is a natural process of discovery. Once they have learned how to make speech sounds reliably, they can move along the path to making more complex meaning with their speech, just like adults. However, making speech sounds reliably turns out to be quite difficult!

Speaking uses a lot of different muscles, all the way from the inside of the nose, down to the bottom of the rib cage. Learning to use these muscles is hard work. To make things more difficult, the muscles need to work together at high speeds in order to create speech. The number of different muscles and the speed required for speech makes learning to talk more difficult than learning to walk! To build up strong, fast muscles for speaking, children need to practise, with lots of reps at the mouth gym. That’s where babbling comes in – it’s a workout for the mouth. You can help your little one on the path to strong language skills by responding to babbles, echoes and other kinds of meaningless sounds as though it is meaningful speech. This helps children know that you are interested in their speech sounds, and helps them learn more about the structure of a conversation, complete with turn taking, responses, and the melody of a back and forth interaction.

How does it work? When children are learning to speak, they are aware of the difference between their own way of saying words and the way that adults say words. Several studies have shown that when babies hear an adult say words incorrectly (e.g., saying ‘fesh’ instead of ‘fish’), their brain responds to the word differently, and they don’t always think it is the same word. This is just one example of how children’s perception for speech can be ahead of their production of speech. That is to say, little ones’ ears are ahead of their mouths in the language learning game.

Importantly, even when children know how to say many words, they sometimes struggle to say them, or they make mistakes when saying them. This is because the motor routines for creating sounds with their mouths is still new, and a little unstable. These routines can break down easily if a child is distracted, tired, or feeling strong emotions. This is particularly important for toddlers, where tantrums can be a sign that a child is frustrated by their inability to communicate. You can support your child’s developing language skills by responding to nonsense sounds and imprecise pronunciations as though they are truly meaningful – this way you can focus on the joy of interacting rather than the precision of the movements.

Babbling and meaningless speech are a great way for children to practise the sing-song melody of a conversation. To boost your interactions through babbling you can:

• listen out for vocal sounds
• show your interest
• reply to babbles with real words and sentences
• respond to the meaning of your child’s speech, without correcting errors

Key point. When children are still building up strength in their speech muscles, there’s no need to focus on whether children are pronouncing individual words or sounds ‘correctly’. Rather, you can focus on how speech sounds are an opportunity for interaction, and the fun of your talk together.

*Did you know? For babies who grow up in households where some of the people use sign language, they can learn exactly the same things about sign language, and babies in signing households babble with their fingers).

 

Watch: Twins exercising their speech muscles through a babbling conversation

Watch: a video about communicative babbling (1:44 min)

Read more about babbling

http://www.hanen.org/Helpful-Info/Articles/Baby-Babble–A-Stepping-Stone-to-Words.aspx

 

Read the science:

Babbling and the melody of multiple languages: Sundara, M., Ward, N., Conboy, B., & Kuhl, P. K. (2020). Exposure to a second language in infancy alters speech production. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1-14. Free Access Link.

Brain responses to mispronounced words: Duta, M. D., Styles, S. J., & Plunkett, K. (2012). ERP correlates of unexpected word forms in a picture-word study of infants and adults. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2, 223-234. Free Access Link.