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Parents should use nursery rhymes and sing-songs to help young children learn language, according to experts.
Evidence suggests that the slow, rising and falling rhythm of nursery rhymes like Humpty Dumpty, much like the soothing sing-song speech parents use with young children, helps children recognize individual words within sentences.
Scientists have now concluded that rhythm is vital, after finding that babies do not correctly recognize individual sound types such as 'ba' and 'ga' until they are seven months old.
The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, measured the brain activity of 50 children who were played recordings of 18 nursery rhymes when they were aged four, seven and 11 months.
Previous analysis found that children's brains respond to rhythm at all of these ages.
Parents should use nursery rhymes and sing-song words to help young children learn language, experts say (stock image)
For example, a word like “Humpty,” where the first syllable is pronounced with greater emphasis than the second syllable, produces specific brain activity in children, and may help them understand that many English words have a “da-dum” structure.
The new analysis now provides more evidence that it is rhythm, not the sounds of individual words, that helps young children learn language.
To see whether babies learned the sound units of each word, such as “ba,” “ma,” or “ga,” the researchers looked at their brains' response about a quarter of a second after each sound during nursery rhymes.
They ignored brain responses previously seen in response to rhythm, to focus only on individual sounds in words.
Stronger brain activity for word sounds has not been observed in younger babies, and only appears when babies are seven months old.
This activity was not very strong, even when the children were 11 months old.
The results suggest that rhythmic speech is better than individual word sounds for language learning during the important period when children are very young.
This means that parents who read nursery rhymes, or use sing-song speech, which exaggerates the pitch of rising and falling words such as “Humpty Dumpty,” provide children with more clues about how language works than if they were speaking naturally.
To see if babies learned the sound units of each word, such as “ba,” “ma,” or “ga,” the researchers looked at their brains' response about a quarter of a second after each sound during nursery rhymes.
The study's senior author, neuroscientist Professor Usha Goswami, from the University of Cambridge, said: 'Our research shows that individual speech sounds are not processed reliably until around seven months, even though most babies can recognize familiar words such as 'bottle' orally. “. this point.
Since then, individual speech sounds have been added very slowly – too slowly to form the basis of language.
“We believe that speech rhythm information is the invisible glue that supports the development of a well-functioning language system.”
“Parents should talk and sing to their babies as much as possible or use infant-directed speech such as nursery rhymes because it will make a difference in language outcomes.”
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, used a special algorithm to separate how children's brains responded to rhythm and phonetic word sounds separately, in electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings taken from electrodes placed on their heads.
Babies seem to take a long time to learn word sounds, starting with understanding the sounds produced by the upper front teeth such as the “d” for “daddy” before picking up on the sounds produced by blowing air through the nose, such as the “m” for “mummy.” .
But this detection of phonetic sounds only seems to begin at seven months of age, well after the period of four to six months when babies are known to be able to recognize words.
So the researchers suggest that rhythm should help before this point.
Previous studies suggest that children discover some phonemes at a younger age, but it often relies on children turning their heads toward the sound of a word in their own language, rather than those in a different or fictitious language.
The authors say their research, using brain activity during nursery rhymes, suggests that very young children may not rely on word sounds when processing language from full sentences in speech — even if they can detect individual sounds.
The findings could help better understand the errors that occur in children who learn language with greater difficulty, such as those with dyslexia, when they are still children.
Professor Giovanni Di Liberto, first author of the study, from Trinity College Dublin, said: “This is our first evidence of how brain activity relates to changing acoustic information over time in response to ongoing speech.”
(Tags for translation) Daily Mail