It's no secret that children learn to speak when they are spoken to — the more the better.
But new research led by University of Pennsylvania scientists suggests that the quality of the parents' speech, not the quantity, is what really makes a difference in building a child's vocabulary.
What's more, although past research found that children of wealthier and more educated parents were more likely to hear lots of words, the new study found no connection between parents' quality of speech and their socioeconomic status.
Anyone, in other words, should be able to give a kid a leg up.
"Kids really learn the meanings of words in one or two exposures," said Penn's Lila R. Gleitman, one of the study's authors and a professor emerita of psychology and linguistics. "It's a matter of talking to your child, instead of talking at your child."
Start 'em young
The study, a collaboration with University of Chicago researchers, was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors did not attempt to identify the specific elements that make up quality speech.
Instead, they played multiple videos of 50 parents speaking to their toddler children and measured how easy it was for untrained observers to guess what the parents were saying with the sound turned off. The observers were 218 undergraduates from Penn and La Salle University.
After 30 seconds had elapsed in each video, a beep sounded, and the students had to guess what word the parent was saying at that moment — common words such as ball, dog, book and water.