By: Katie Harrison

You’ve heard it more than enough times – repeating what you’ve learned and studying new information multiple times makes it easier to remember and retain. However, this doesn’t only apply for kids in schools and universities. The same actually goes for infants.

A new study from the University of Maryland and Harvard University explains that infants can benefit greatly from hearing new words repeated by their parents. It is said that this repetitive action will help the infants in their toddler years, and even later.

The study’s co-author, Rochelle Newman, professor and chair of University of Maryland’s Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, said, “Parents who repeat words more often to their infants have children with better language skills a year and a half later. A lot of recent focus has been on simply talking more to your child, but how you talk to your child matters. It isn’t just about the number of words.”

Newman and co-authors, Nan Bernstein Ratner and Meredith L. Rowe, tracked the ability of infants to understand language at the young age of seven months old. The researchers later looked at the children’s vocabulary at the age of two years old. Toddlers who had stronger language skills had two things that differed from the other children: “Their parents had repeated words more often, and they were more tuned in to the language as infants, and thus better able to process what was being said,” Science Daily reported on the study.

Dr. Ratner said, “It takes two to tango. Both the child and the parent play a role in the child’s later language outcomes, and our study is the first to show that.”

Keep repeating key words and phrases to your baby nieces and nephews – in fact – to any child in your life. Not only can you use words to make babies smile and laugh, the language development will help them as they develop into pre-schoolers.

Photo: ersler
Published: September 29, 2015