Social feedback for infant chatter

Babies begin to produce sounds and chatter, and over time learn to speak. A new study examines whether the way the caregiver reacts to chatter affects the baby's verbal ability

Dr. Miriam Dishon-Berkowitz. Published in the June 2008 issue of the Galileo journal

Anyone who is in the company of babies is surely delighted to follow their "chattering"; For example, when they turn to the mobile phone hanging above their bed or to the figure who takes care of them.

Those who follow the oral development of babies are surely amazed by the dramatic changes that babies show in their first year. From the initial ability to produce sounds, most babies progress by the age of one to express their first words. In between they learn to pronounce syllables similar to speech and shape their pronunciation in a way similar to the language spoken in their environment.

Most of the studies in this field have so far focused on biological or cognitive factors for the oral development of babies, and "baby chatter" has not been an object of research. However, research findings from recent years indicate that when the person taking care of the baby reacts to his chatter, this helps the baby both distinguish between different sounds and learn to pronounce sounds of the language spoken in his environment. The few studies in this field have so far focused on the similarity between the sounds produced by the baby and the syllables that exist in the language spoken around him.

Investigate the chatter

Now Michael Goldstein (Goldstein) and Jennifer Schwade (Schwade), in a study published in the journal Psychological Science, are trying to answer the question of whether the way the caregiver reacts to the baby's chatter affects the phonology of the chatter, that is, the way the baby adds the vowels, a lot before the stage where he produces words.

60 nine-month-old babies and their mothers took part in the study. The babies came with their mother to the research laboratory, and a wireless microphone was attached to them and their mother, with which they were recorded.

To test the babies' ability to learn new patterns of phonological structures from the mother's speech, the participants were divided into four experimental groups. The mothers in the first two groups were asked to respond to each chatter of the baby by talking to him, while they approach him, smile at him and touch him. The mothers in the first group were asked to respond in speech consisting only of movements. The mothers in the second group were asked to respond with speech consisting of words, so that the infants would be exposed to a consonant-vowel speech pattern.

In order to separate effects that may be obtained from the very enthusiasm of a baby that his mother is talking to him and effects that originate from the fact that his mother is reacting directly to the chatter he utters, the third and fourth research groups were created in this way: the mothers in these groups put on headphones through which the experimenter instructed them how to talk to the baby. The mothers in the third group were asked to pronounce the same movements as the mothers in the first group; The mothers in the fourth group were asked to say the same words (consonant-vowel) that the mothers in the second group said.

Note that the mothers in the first two groups responded "online" directly to their babies' chatter. In contrast, the responses of the mothers in the third and fourth groups were identical to those of the mothers in the first two groups in the sounds they produced, but were out of synchronization with their own babies' chatter. Like the mothers in the first and second groups, the mothers in the third and fourth groups were also asked to approach the baby when they talk to him, touch him and smile at him.

You should respond online

The chatter of the babies in all groups was analyzed according to the similarity of the sounds they produced to consonants and vowels. From the analysis of the research findings, it appears that babies in the first and second groups changed their babbling according to the phonological structure of their mothers' speech: babies in the first group uttered babblings more similar to vowels, while babies in the second group uttered babblings more similar to a sequence of consonant-vowels.

In contrast, infants in the third and fourth groups, who heard the same maternal sounds as the infants in the first two groups, but whose mothers did not synchronize their speech with their babbling, did not change the phonological characteristics of their babbling (eg, pronouncing more vowels or more consonants).

In conclusion, the mere presence of phonological patterns in the speech of the character communicating with the baby is not enough to help in language learning, since babies whose mothers did not respond "online" to their chatter (in the third and fourth groups) did not demonstrate learning (a change in the phonological characteristics of their chatter). The research findings imply, therefore, that the way the mother (or the caring figure) reacts "online" to her baby's chatter affects the baby's verbal ability.

Miriam Dishon-Berkowitz is a psychologist and organizational and marketing consultant