undefined
undefined
Babies prefer baby talk, whether they're learning one language or two
It can be hard to resist lapsing into an exaggerated, singsong tone when you talk to a cute baby. And that's with good reason. Babies will pay more attention to baby talk than regular speech, regardless of which languages they're used to hearing, according to a study by UCLA's Language Acquisition Lab and 16 other labs around the globe.
The study found that babies who were exposed to two languages had a greater interest in infant-directed speech -- that is, an adult speaking baby talk -- than adult-directed speech. Research has already shown that monolingual babies prefer baby talk.
Some parents worry that teaching two languages could mean an infant won't learn to speak on time, but the new study shows bilingual babies are developmentally right on track. The peer-reviewed study, published today by Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, found bilingual babies became interested in baby talk at the same age as those learning one language.
"Crucially for parents, we found that development of learning and attention is similar in infants, whether they're learning one or two languages," said Megha Sundara, a UCLA linguistics professor and director of the Language Acquisition Lab. "And, of course, learning a language earlier helps you learn it better, so bilingualism is a win-win."
In the study, which took place at 17 labs on four continents, researchers observed 333 bilingual babies and 384 monolingual babies, ranging in age from 6 to 9 months and 12 to 15 months. UCLA's lab was the only one to provide data on bilingual babies who grew up hearing both English and Spanish. Sundara and Victoria Mateu, a UCLA assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese, observed babies who were 12 to 15 months old.
Each baby would sit on a parent's lap while recordings of an English-speaking mother, using either infant-directed speech or adult-directed speech, played from speakers on the left or the right. Computer tracking measured how long each baby looked in the direction of each sound.
"The longer they looked, the stronger their preference," Mateu said. "Babies tend to pay more attention to the exaggerated sounds of infant-directed speech."
Infants' interest in English baby talk was very fine-tuned, the study noted. Bilingual parents indicated the percent of time English was spoken at home compared to Spanish. The more English the bilingual babies had been exposed to, the stronger their preference for infant-directed speech compared to adult-directed speech. However, even babies with no exposure to English preferred the English baby talk to the grown-up talk, Mateu said.
Baby talk is found across most languages and cultures, but English has one of the most exaggerated forms, Sundara said.
"Baby talk has a slower rate of speech across all languages, with more variable pitch, and it's more animated and happy," she said. "It varies mainly in how exaggerated it is."
Led by Krista Byers-Heinlein, a psychology professor at Concordia University in Montreal, the study involved labs in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and Singapore. The study's global reach strengthened the results, Sundara said.
"When you do language research, you want to know that the results aren't just some quirk of the language you're studying," she said.
According to the study, 6- to 9-month-old babies who had mothers with higher levels of education preferred baby talk more than babies whose mothers had less education.
"We suspect that perhaps the mothers with higher education levels spoke more to the babies and used infant-directed speech more often," Mateu said.
This study is one of the first published by the ManyBabies Consortium, a multi-lab group of researchers. Byers-Heinlein believes the unusual international, multilingual collaboration creates a model for future studies that include a similar breadth of languages and cultures.
"We can really make progress in understanding bilingualism, and especially the variability of bilingualism, thanks to our access to all these different communities," she said.
As the research continues, parents can babble to their babies in one language or two, and rest easy knowing they won't cause any confusion.
Baby talk: speech development from 12-18 months
Find out when your child might first start talking, and what you can do to help along their first attempts at communication.
You can expect to hear pearls of wisdom – or at least recognisable words – from your baby around the 12 to 18 month mark.
Encourage these first tentative words by chatting to your baby yourself, listening and answering back when they ‘talk’. It can also help if you can recognise child language stages and when they might reach them. You obviously won’t be expecting the sonnets of Shakespeare when they’re still in nappies, for example.
When will my baby talk?
Eager as you might be to hear your baby talk, there’s no set time for when to whip out your phone to capture their first words.
By 12 to 18 months, your baby will start to use language in a more recognisable way and you may start to hear them talking. You might find at first that only you and a few of your baby’s favourite people can make out what they’re saying. But it’s wonderful after all this time to hear them finally get across what’s been going on in their little heads.
Your baby will also become more sociable at this age. You might have a chatterbox on your hands.
Singing nursery rhymes with actions like ‘incey-wincey-spider’ will help connect words to actions. It’ll also help your child to understand and remember words. Aha, so that’s why nursery rhymes have been such a hit for centuries.
Baby speech development by 18 months
Toddlers develop skills at different rates, and to begin with their speech might only be recognisable to adults who often spend time with them. But by 18 months, their language will be rapidly improving and there are a few things you would expect them to be able to do:
- Enjoy playing games like peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake.
- Have fun playing with toys that make a noise.
- Start to understand a few simple words, like ‘drink’, ‘shoe’ and ‘car’.
- They might recognise simple instructions like 'kiss mummy', 'kick ball' and 'give me’.
- Point to things when asked, like familiar people and objects such as ‘book’ and ‘ball’.
- Use up to 20 simple words, such as 'cup', 'daddy' and 'dog'.
- Gesture or point, often with words or sounds to show what they want.
- Copy lots of things that adults say and gestures that they make.
- Start to enjoy simple pretend play, for example pretending to talk on the phone.
(Talking Point, 2013a)
Speech and language skills usually develop from a very early age. Some children don’t develop the early skills they need and you should speak to a GP or paediatrician if you are concerned.
Parents should speak to a GP, health visitor or speech and language therapist if:
- Their child has not started to babble to communicate by 12 to 15 months.
- They are not saying their first words by 18 months.
- They do not respond well to language, such as not following simple instructions like ‘kick ball’.
How can I help my toddler talk?
Your baby will develop at their own rate, and you can’t force them to articulate words before they’re ready. But there are lots of things you can do to encourage your child’s fledgling communication.
Nursery rhymes with actions
Ones like ‘incey-wincey-spider’ are not only fun, but help your child associate words with actions. They’ll also help your child understand and remember words. Ditto games like ‘pat-a-cake’ and ‘peek-a-boo’.
Games with 'more' or ‘again'
These can also help attention and communication as your child comes to know what to expect.
Toys and objects that make a noise
Beeping cars or fire engine sirens, can encourage children’s attention and listening skills. Noisy books and tapes are good too, and something you can both do together.
Try to tell your baby what you’re doing
When your child starts communicating, you might be tempted to ask them lots of questions. (You have been waiting a long time to find out if they really like Mr Quackers or Little Bunny best after all.)
But bombarding them with questions can feel like you’re testing them. So boost communication instead by telling them about what you’re doing, such as ‘daddy is putting shoes on’. This will help them to connect words to the world around them.
Describe the objects your child points to
This could be their toys, clothes, parts of their body or household objects. To us it’s very obvious what a chair is, but your child doesn’t yet know the name of this big thing that people sit on.
If they try to say the word, repeat it to them
The more your child hears a word, the quicker they will remember it. When they do start saying words regularly, repeat the words back to them when they mispronounce them. This will happen a lot.
(I Can, 2010; NHS, 2017)
It’s incredible the information that your child is absorbing, so try not to rush them. You can both enjoy the wonderful moments when your child starts talking more and more.
This page was last reviewed in July 2018.
Further information
Our support line offers practical and emotional support with feeding your baby and general enquiries for parents, members and volunteers: 0300 330 0700.
You might find attending one of NCT's Early Days groups helpful as they give you the opportunity to explore different approaches to important parenting issues with a qualified group leader and other new parents in your area.
Make friends with other parents-to-be and new parents in your local area for support and friendship by seeing what NCT activities are happening nearby.
Why the baby brain can learn two languages at the same time
Disclosure statement
The research described here was supported by the National Science Foundation Science of Learning Center Program grant to the UW LIFE Center (P.K.K., PI: Grant No. SMA-0835854), the Ready Mind Project at the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, and the Washington State Life Science Discovery Fund (LSDF).
Partners
University of Washington provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.
We believe in the free flow of informationRepublish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Any adult who has attempted to learn a foreign language can attest to how difficult and confusing it can be. So when a three-year-old growing up in a bilingual household inserts Spanish words into his English sentences, conventional wisdom assumes that he is confusing the two languages.
Research shows that this is not the case.
In fact, early childhood is the best possible time to learn a second language. Children who experience two languages from birth typically become native speakers of both, while adults often struggle with second language learning and rarely attain native-like fluency.
But the question remains: is it confusing for babies to learn two languages simultaneously?
When do babies learn language?
Research shows babies begin to learn language sounds before they’re even born. In the womb, a mother’s voice is one of the most prominent sounds an unborn baby hears. By the time they’re born, newborns can not only tell the difference between their mother’s language and another language, but also show a capability of distinguishing between languages.
Language learning depends on the processing of sounds. All the world’s languages put together comprise about 800 or so sounds. Each language uses only about 40 language sounds, or “phonemes,” which distinguish one language from another.
At birth, the baby brain has an unusual gift: it can tell the difference between all 800 sounds. This means that at this stage infants can learn any language that they’re exposed to. Gradually babies figure out which sounds they are hearing the most.
Babies learn to recognize their mother’s voice even before they are born. John Mayer, CC BY
Between six and 12 months, infants who grow up in monolingual households become more specialized in the subset of sounds in their native language. In other words, they become “native language specialists.” And, by their first birthdays, monolingual infants begin to lose their ability to hear the differences between foreign language sounds.
Studying baby brains
What about those babies who hear two languages from birth? Can a baby brain specialize in two languages? If so, how is this process different then specializing in a single language?
Knowing how the baby brain learns one versus two languages is important for understanding the developmental milestones in learning to speak. For example, parents of bilingual children often wonder what is and isn’t typical or expected, or how their child will differ from those children who are learning a single language.
My collaborators and I recently studied the brain processing of language sounds in 11-month-old babies from monolingual (English only) and bilingual (Spanish-English) homes. We used a completely noninvasive technology called magnetoencephalography (MEG), which precisely pinpointed the timing and the location of activity in the brain as the babies listened to Spanish and English syllables.
We found some key differences between infants raised in monolingual versus bilingual homes.
At 11 months of age, just before most babies begin to say their first words, the brain recordings revealed that:
- Babies from monolingual English households are specialized to process the sounds of English, and not the sounds of Spanish, an unfamiliar language
- Babies from bilingual Spanish-English households are specialized to process the sounds of both languages, Spanish and English.
Here’s a video summarizing our study.
Our findings show that babies’ brains become tuned to whatever language or languages they hear from their caregivers. A monolingual brain becomes tuned to the sounds of one language, and a bilingual brain becomes tuned to the sounds of two languages. By 11 months of age, the activity in the baby brain reflects the language or languages that they have been exposed to.
Is it OK to learn two languages?
This has important implications. Parents of monolingual and bilingual children alike are eager for their little ones to utter the first words. It’s an exciting time to learn more about what the baby is thinking. However, a common concern, especially for bilingual parents, is that their child is not learning fast enough.
We found that the bilingual babies showed an equally strong brain response to English sounds as the monolingual babies. This suggests that bilingual babies were learning English at the same rate as the monolingual babies.
Parents of bilingual children also worry that their children will not know as many words as children who are raised with one language.
To some extent, this concern is valid. Bilingual infants split their time between two languages, and thus, on average, hear fewer words in each. However, studies consistently show that bilingual children do not lag behind when both languages are considered.
Vocabulary sizes of bilingual children, when combined across both languages, have been found to be equal to or greater than those of monolingual children.
Another common concern is that bilingualism causes confusion. Part of this concern arises due to “code switching,” a speaking behavior in which bilinguals combine both languages.
For example, my four-year-old son, who speaks English, Spanish, and Slovene, goes as far as using the Slovene endings on Spanish and English words. Research shows bilingual children code-switch because bilingual adults around them do too. Code-switching in bilingual adults and children is rule-governed, not haphazard.
Unlike monolingual children, bilingual children have another language from which they can easily borrow if they can’t quickly retrieve the appropriate word in one language. Even two-year-olds modulate their language to match the language used by their interlocutor.
Researchers have shown code switching to be part of a bilingual child’s normal language development. And it could even be the beginning of what gives them the extra cognitive prowess known as the “bilingual advantage.”