Kids with chattier parents are more talkative, may have bigger vocabulary
Global data set suggests socioeconomic status does not play a role in children’s language development
- 20 DEC 2023
- 1:00 PM ET
- BYCATHLEEN O’GRADY
SHARE:
Why do some children learn to talk earlier than others? Linguists have pointed to everything from socioeconomic status to gender to the number of languages their parents speak. But a new study finds a simpler explanation.
An analysis of nearly 40,000 hours of audio recordings from children around the world suggests kids speak more when the adults around them are more talkative, which may also give them a larger vocabulary early in life. Factors such as social class appear to make no difference, researchers report this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The paper is a “wonderful, impactful, and much needed contribution to the literature,” says Ece Demir-Lira, a developmental scientist at the University of Iowa who was not involved in the work. By looking at real-life language samples from six different continents, she says, the study provides a global view of language development sorely lacking from the literature.
SIGN UP FOR THE SCIENCEADVISER NEWSLETTER
The latest news, commentary, and research, free to your inbox daily
Most studies on language learning have focused on children in Western, industrialized nations. To build a more representative data set, Harvard University developmental psychologist Elika Bergelson and her collaborators scoured the literature for studies that had used LENA devices: small audio recorders that babies can wear—tucked into a pocket on a specially made vest—for days at a time. These devices function as a kind of “talk pedometer,” with an algorithm that estimates how much its wearer speaks, as well as how much language they hear in their environment—from parents, other adults, and even siblings.
The team asked 18 research groups across 12 countries whether they would share their data from the devices, leaving them with a whopping 2865 days of recordings from 1001 children. Many of the kids, who ranged from 2 months to 4 years old, were from English-speaking families, but the data also included speakers of Dutch, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Finnish, as well as Yélî Dnye (Papua New Guinea), Wolof (Senegal), and Tsimané (Bolivia). Combining these smaller data sets gave the researchers a more powerful, diverse sample.
Older children made more vocalizations than younger ones, the team found, and kids with typical development were more verbal than those with hearing loss, autism, or other conditions that can affect language acquisition. And if adults were chattier, so, too, were their children: On average, kids spoke 27 times more per hour for every 100 extra adult vocalizations they heard. The number of vocalizations children make is closely linked to the size of their vocabulary, the team notes.
GNN24 News 