You may feel silly doing it, but baby talk helps your infant learn the basics of human language, a new study suggests.
By mimicking the sound of a smaller vocal tract, baby talk guides babies on how words should sound coming out of their own mouths, the researchers explain.
“It seems to stimulate motor production of speech, not just the perception of speech,” study author Matthew Masapollo, an assistant professor in the University of Florida’s Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences shares.
“It’s not just goo-goo ga-ga,” he said in a university news release.
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In this study, Masapollo and his colleagues changed the frequency of sounds to mimic either an infant or adult vocal tract, and assessed infants’ reactions.
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Babies who were 6 to 8 months old “displayed a robust and distinct preference for speech with resonances specifying a vocal tract that is similar in size and length to their own,” the study authors wrote.
However, 4- to 6-month-old babies didn’t have that preference. It may be that older babies’ emerging ability to control their voices and produce words out of babble makes the infant-like sounds more appealing to them, the researchers suggest.
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Baby talk may sound simple but it is accomplishing a lot, according to study co-author Linda Polka, from McGill University in Montreal.
