When children reach a certain age, parents no longer find baby talk cute. They believe that when a child is old enough, it’s time for him to start speaking as adults do, in full words and sentences.
New studies say, however, that baby talk is actually beneficial to a toddler and the way they develop their vocabulary and learn language.
Published in the Language Learning and Development journal, the study conducted by the researchers from the University of Edinburgh say that babies have an easier time learning new words when they’re repeated in syllables.
For example, saying “bye-bye” instead of goodbye and “night-night” instead of goodnight will make them assimilate the concept of language better.
The infants’ language learning behaviour were tested in a series of visual and attention tests using pictures on a computer screen of two unfamiliar objects.
According to Science Daily, “The two objects were named with made-up words which were communicated to the infants by a recorded voice—one with two identical syllables, for example “neenee,” and the other without repeated syllables, such as “bolay”.
“The infants were then tested for their recognition of each made-up word. Recordings of their eye movements showed they looked more reliably at the object labelled with repeated syllables, than the other object.”
In fact, experts say that baby took is a good place from which to start teaching language and vocabulary in children.
“This is the first evidence to show that infants have a repetition bias in learning new words,” said Mitsuhiko Ota, the lead researcher of the study.
Researchers also posited that the reason adults speak in such a way to babies is because babies respond to repeated utterance of words better, hence the use of “dada” for the word daddy and “tumtum” for tummy.
“Other studies in relation to music, vision and behaviour have shown that babies tend to learn better with patterns and repetition,” said a Parent Herald story. “This research implies that the same is also true for learning words.”
Does this mean you should allow your child to baby talk when they’re five-years-old? Maybe not, but there’s no harm in teaching them proper language as soon as they can speak straight.
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