Speaking to babies in long sentences boosts language development

WASHINGTON -- If you want your kids to learn to talk in the best possible way, a new study suggests you should ditch the baby talk and speak to them in normal sentences.

The findings suggest that videos that claim to teach toddlers, or flash cards for tots, may not be the best idea. Instead, simply talking babies was found to be key to building crucial language and vocabulary skills -- but sooner is better, and long sentences are good.

For example, instead of just saying, "Here's an orange," it would be better to say: "Let's put the orange in this bowl with the banana and the apple and the grapes."

"It's making nets of meaning that then will help the child learn new words," explained study author Dr. Anne Fernald, a Stanford University psychology professor.

Her new research aims to explain, and help solve, the troubling "word gap": Kids from more affluent, professional families hear millions more words before they start school than poor kids, leaving the lower-income students at an academic disadvantage that's difficult to overcome.

That gap starts to appear at a younger age than scientists once thought, around 18 months, said Fernald.

Her research was presented this week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The results suggest that it's not just hearing lists of words that matters as much as rich, varied language with good grammar that trains babies' brains to learn through context.

"The advice I give mothers is to have conversations with your babies," added Erika Hoff, a psychology professor at Florida Atlantic University. "Children can hear lots of talk that goes over their head in terms of the meaning, and they still benefit from it."

The research comes amid a growing push for universal preschool, to help disadvantaged youth catch up. But it also raises the question of whether children from low-income, less educated families need earlier intervention, such as preschool that starts at age 3 instead of 4, or higher quality day care or even some sort of "Let's talk" campaign aimed at new parents to stress talking, singing and reading with tots even before they can respond. That can be difficult for parents working multiple jobs, or who may not read well or who simply don't know why it's important.

Scientists have long known that before they start kindergarten, children from middle-class or affluent families have heard millions more words than youngsters from low-income families, leaving the poorer children with smaller vocabularies and less ready to succeed academically. Fernald said by some measures, 5-year-olds from low-income families can lag two years behind their peers in tests of language development.

Brain scans support the link, said Dr. Kimberly Noble of Columbia University Medical Center. Early experiences shape the connections that children's brains form, and kids from higher socio-economic backgrounds devote more "neural real estate" to brain regions involved in language development, she found.

How early does the word gap appear? Around age 18 months, Stanford's Fernald discovered when she compared how children mentally process the language they hear. Lower-income kids in her study achieved at age 2 the level of proficiency that more affluent kids had reached six months earlier.

To understand why language processing is so important, consider this sentence: "The kitty's on the bench." If the youngster knows the word "kitty," and his brain recognizes it quickly enough, then he can figure out what "bench" means by the context. But if he's slow to recognize "kitty," then "bench" flies by before he has a chance to learn it.

Next, Fernald tucked recorders into T-shirts of low-income toddlers in Spanish-speaking households to determine what they heard all day - and found remarkable differences in what's called child-directed speech. That's when children are spoken to directly, in contrast to television or conversations they overhear.

One child heard more than 12,000 words of child-directed speech in a day, while another heard a mere 670 words, she found. The youngsters who received more child-directed speech processed language more efficiently and learned words more quickly, she reported.

But it's not just quantity of speech that matters - it's quality, Hoff cautioned. She studied bilingual families and found that whatever the language, children fare better when they learn it from a native speaker. In other words, if Mom and Dad speak Spanish but aren't fluent in English, it's better for the child to have a solid grounding in Spanish at home and then learn English later in school.

Next, scientists are testing whether programs that teach parents better ways to talk to tots really do any good. Fernald said preliminary results from one of the first - a program called Habla Conmigo, Spanish for Talk With Me, that enrolls low-income, Spanish-speaking mothers in San Jose, Calif. - are promising.

Fernald analyzed the first 32 families of the 120 the program will enroll. Mothers who underwent the eight-week training are talking more with their toddlers, using higher-quality language, than a control group of parents - and by their second birthday, the children have bigger vocabularies and process language faster, she said Thursday.

Tips for parents:

-The sooner you start talking with babies, the better. Their brains are absorbing vital information well before they're able to respond.

-The high-pitched, sing-song tone that many people take with babies does get their attention. But don't dumb it down: Use rich, varied language and longer sentences, said Erika Hoff of Florida Atlantic University.

-Don't just label things, make connections. "The dog is wagging his tail" isn't as effective as, "Look how fluffy that dog's tail is. It's much fatter than the cat's skinny tail."

-What matters most is speech directed to babies and toddlers, not what they overhear, said Anne Fernald of Stanford University.

-Turn off the TV. "Television does not help the brain learn language," said Noble. Babies and toddlers especially require personal interaction to learn.

-Reading a book for 10 minutes a day adds up fast, Fernald noted. If Mom or Dad isn't a good reader, just talk about the pictures.

-Fit conversation into everyday activities. Instead of turning on music while fixing lunch, talk about the bowl of fruit on the table.