PARENT’S BEHAVIORAL CORRECTIONS TUNE INFANT’S BRAIN TO ANGRY TONE
The same brain network that adults use when they hear angry vocalizations is at work in infants as young as six months old, an effect that is strongest in infants whose mothers spend the most time controlling their behavior, according to a new study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Chen Zhao of the […]
INFANTS CAN TELL FRIENDS FROM STRANGERS JUST BY HEARING THEM LAUGH
In the company of an old friend, conversation and humor flow naturally. However, when we have to interact with a stranger, things can feel awkward even when you’re both laughing along — and this can be easily sensed from the outside as well. According to a new study, infants as young as five months old […]
INFANTS CAPABLE OF COMPLEX BABBLE MAY GROW INTO STRONGER READERS
Some skills needed for literacy may be developed in infancy Infants’ early speech production may predict their later literacy, according to a study published October 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kelly Farquharson from Florida State University and colleagues. Children with difficulties in identifying letters are more likely to develop reading impairments, but […]
WHO’S BETTER AT BABY TALK, MOM OR DAD?
The latest research shows that moms and dads use baby talk in different ways, and that boys and girls respond to them differently. In a study published in the online edition of Pediatrics, researchers looked at the language interactions between 33 late preterm and term infants and their parents by capturing 3,000 hours of recordings. […]
INFANTS’ LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IS ACCELERATED BY ATTENTIVE PARENTS
According to a new study from The University of Iowa and Indiana University, how parents react to their infants’ babbling impacts their language development. The research was recently published in the journal Infancy. The research team, includes Julie Gros-Louis, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Iowa. A study by Gros-Louis in 2003 compared […]
TOUCH INFLUENCES HOW INFANTS LEARN LANGUAGE
Tickling a baby’s toes may be cute but according to studies it’s also possible that those touches could help babies learn the words in their language. Research from Purdue University shows that a caregiver’s touch can help babies to find words in the continuous stream of speech. “We found that infants treat touches as if […]
MOTHERS’ AND BABIES’ BRAINWAVES SYNCHRONIZE WHEN THEY GAZE AT EACH OTHER
Scientists have discovered that making eye contact with babies synchs their brainwaves with adults and could help them to learn and communicate more easily. Researchers already knew that when parents interact with their children their emotions and heart rate synchronize but they have never tested it with the brain until now. In a study of […]
THE ROLE OF VOCALIZATION IN INFANT MASSAGE
Another element in the dance of bonding is vocalization. From the moment she first responded to sound at around seven months gestation, your infant has been listening to your voice. Her body moves in rhythm with your speech patterns, and the high-pitched tone you use when talking to her is particularly sweet to her ears. […]
Moms’ Language Affects How Infants Cry
An interesting study finds that babies’ crying has melodic patterns that are influenced by their mother’s language. During the last quarter of pregnancy, the babies get ample opportunity to become acquainted with their “mother language.” Kathleen Wermke, professor at the University of Wurzburg in Germany, says, “Building blocks for the development of the future language […]
Infants Can Think Before They Learn Words
According to a study published online in the journal Child Development, human babies can understand basic abstract relations — whether two objects are the same or different — even before they learn the words to describe such relations. Analogical ability — the ability to see common relations between objects, events or ideas — is a […]