Talking to Your Baby Can Advance Their Language Skills

A new study shows that talking to your baby can increase their brain power and establish a firm base for their language skills, The Guardian reported.

It turns out that talking to your baby even before they can talk back yet is not just beneficial for bonding with your baby but it is also quite educational for the young one.

Scientists investigated the language skills and capabilities of babies and children. Then they compared the results of children whose parents spoke to them the most during infancy with the results of children whose parents spent the least amount of time talking to their babies.

The analysis clearly showed a significant difference between the two groups; children who were spoken to the most growing up did better at school, especially in language tests. On the other hand, the children who were not spoken to much during infancy did not do so well in language tests, coming out as the worst. They even lagged behind their peers' development, in same cases  by up to 6 months, when they were only 24 months old, reported by The Guardian.

A developmental psychologist from Stanford University Prof Anne Fernald told The Guardian that speaking to babies enables them to have a basic understanding of the rules and the rhythms of language starting from an early age, which can work as a firm base to build an understanding of the world later on. "You need to start talking to them from day one. You are building a mind, a mind that can conceptualize, that can think about the past and the future," Fernal said in his speech at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Chicago.

The experts made emphasis on the importance of having real conversations with children, especially about things children find interesting, instead of putting them in front of a TV or allowing them play with an iPad, which clearly can not enhance a young one's mind as much as conversations could, The Guardian reported.