Speaking to babies in “sing-song” speech, such as nursery rhymes, is the most effective method for teaching them to talk, a new study suggests.
Traditionally, linguists have viewed phonetics – the smallest sound elements of speech, usually represented by the alphabet – as the cornerstone of language learning. It was believed that babies learn these phonetic elements and combine them to form words.
However, researchers from the University of Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin reveals that babies do not process phonetic information until around seven months-old and still struggle with it at about 11 months-old – around the age when they typically begin to speak their first words.
The study indicates that, in their early months, babies learn language primarily from rhythmic speech and patterns, with the emphasis on songs aiding them in identifying the start and end of individual words.
“Our research shows that the individual sounds of speech are not processed reliably until around seven months old, even though most infants can recognize familiar words like ‘bottle’ by this point. We believe therefore that speech rhythm information is the hidden glue underpinning the development of a well-functioning language system,” says Professor Usha Goswami, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, in a media release.
“Infants can use rhythmic information like a scaffold or skeleton to add phonetic information on to. For example, they might learn that the rhythm pattern of English words is typically strong-weak, as in ‘daddy’ or ‘mummy,’ with the stress on the first syllable. They can use this rhythm pattern to guess where one word ends and another begins when listening to natural speech.”
Source: https://studyfinds.org/nursery-rhymes-baby-brain/
