Page 11 - ELG1810 Oct Issue 461

Taking turns to talk Baby talk good

builds better brain links for vocabulary
By Federica Tedeschi
By Federica Tedeschi nature of the growth ‘supports the idea The more infants are exposed to baby
The more parents talk with their children that qualitative aspects of children’s early words like ‘bunny’ and ‘choo-choo’, the more
from an early age, the better the child’s brain language experience, as opposed to the likely they are to develop their vocabulary
develops in terms of language processing, sheer quantitative aspects, may be the quickly, according to a study from the
neuroscientific research from America largest influence on children’s language University of Edinburgh.
has revealed. development,’ although further research The families of 47 infants were asked to
The number of times a child takes turns may be needed. record verbal interactions with their babies.
listening and speaking correlates with the This suggest that parents should be Researchers then analysed the recordings
strength of connectivity between the Broca encouraged to talk with their children and estimated each child’s vocabulary size ‘by
and the Wernicke areas, the two canonical in a way that promotes ‘optimal summing up the number of words each child
language regions located in the left side of brain development’. reportedly produced at 9, 15 and 21 months.’
the brain. These areas are critical for the The findings also highlight the specific By comparing vocabulary size to the
comprehension and production of speech. role that such conversational turns play in a language each baby heard, they established
This paper builds on the study by the particular aspect of the brain development that infants who were more often exposed
same authors reported in the March 2018 and calls into question the ‘word-gap’ to diminutives ending in ‘y’, like ‘mummy’
EL Gazette. This showed that turn-taking theory. and ‘tummy’, as well as reduplication such
was a better predictor of language ability This theory has been influential over the as ‘din-din’ and ‘night-night’, showed quicker
in preschool children than the number last 30 years. It links language ability to vocabulary growth than children who heard
of words to which the child was exposed, exposure to speech which in turn is linked a lower proportion of baby talk.
a finding that, if it holds true in L2, to parental Social and Economic Status. Researchers also checked for
would call into question the well-known Studies showed that school-age children onomatopoeic words depicting sounds
comprehensible in-put hypothesis. who grew up in higher-SES families produced by animals and vehicles, such as
For both studies, researcher Rachel are, on average, exposed to 30 million ‘meow’ and ‘vroom’. These did not seem to
Romeo and colleagues at the Massachusetts more words than children raised in be related to vocabulary growth among the
Institute of Technology (MIT) recruited a disadvantaged families. babies in the sample.
socio-economically diverse sample of 40 The MIT Study, however, identified An ‘interesting question to address
four-to-six-year old native English speaker that turn-taking was correlated to better in future research is whether the effects
children and their parents. linguistic abilities even taking into account of diminutive or reduplicative lexical
They measured the amount of SES and, therefore, could provide the basis input continues beyond this age,’ the
conversational turn-taking over a for an effective intervention with at-risk authors stressed.
weekend using the Language Environment children. It might also provide the basis
Analysis (LENA) recording system. for interventions designed to work with L1 tests reveal
All subjects had been pre-tested migrant children.
for normal verbal and non-verbal L2 diffi culties
cognitive skills. ■ Rachel R. Romeo, Joshua Segaran, Julia
Brain scans were taken at the end of the A. Leonard, Sydney T. Robinson, Martin R.
intervention. These were examined in the West, Allyson P. Mackey, Anastasia Yendiki, By Federica Tedeschi
new study and showed for the first time that Meredith L. Rowe, John D. E. Gabrieli. The Tests of reading and listening skills in L1,
the more turns the children took with their Journal of Neuroscience, 2018; 0484-18 can provide useful diagnostic information
parents the more likely the white brain DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0484-18.2018 about L2 reading difficulties in opaque
matter near the Broca area was to grow. https://www .sciencedaily .com/ languages such as English, a study from the
Researchers argue that the precise releases/2018/08/180813133422.htm University of Lancaster suggests.
The study, which covered 280 Slovenian
students found dyslexic-style problems in L2
tests both with the 47 children diagnosed
with L1 dyslexia and with non-dyslexics
who had poor L1 reading skills.
Dyslexia, a neurological condition
unrelated to general cognitive ability, is more
commonly diagnosed in speakers of opaque
languages, such as English and French, than
in transparent languages such as Slovenian.
The condition is identified with
weaknesses not only in reading but also in
working memory and processing speed.
The children took a battery of tests in
reading and listening in both L1 and L2.
The amount of adult-child conversational turns that young children The study found that the best predictor of
experience is related to the strength of white matter connections dyslexia-like problems in L2 were L1 tests of
between two key language regions in the brain, as represented by timed word reading, and dictation.
the coloured brain regions from two participants. Although both According to the authors, tests showing
children are the same age and gender, and from the same socio- low level L1 reading skills ‘can yield useful
economic background, they differ in the number of conversational turns diagnostic information about L2 reading
experienced, which correlates to the strength of white matter connectivity difficulties in cases when dyslexia is not …
in these pathways. (courtesy of: MIT) officially identified.’
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