Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds
theguardian.comI wonder how this squares with the research on cultures where parents scarcely talk to babies, and they turn out fine? [1]
1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/parents-in-a-remo...
The article notes that the babies are with their mothers most of the time, so they're probably exposed to plenty of language even if it not specifically aimed at them.
Oh sure, but they're presumably not using sing-song baby language, or perhaps singing songs all that much.
Im in the midst of reading Pinkers the Language Instinct and the basic thesis is that language is innate. Preventing language would be like preventing eating.
The sing-song thing is cultural but powerful. It’s hard (for me) to not default to it with my one year old.
Edit: LOL I clearly commented before reading the article.
We know of cases where, due to living early years in isolation, a human being was prevented from learning full-fledged language, e.g. Genie.[0]
Who says that sing-songy language is necessary? Kids actually crave being taken seriously like adults and teachers who do that are often well liked!
My actual question is … how to develop good humor and playfulness in kids? Some people grow up with somewhat stunted senses of humor it seems. Is there something one can do? Research?
Difference between toddlers and kids.
My parents were deaf, so there wasn't much singing to me when I was a baby. But I managed to pick up spoken language anyhow so I doubt that singing is vital as the headline suggests. Generally as long as babies aren't deprived or abused when they are young, they'll grow up fine.
This is 100% my experience.
The amount of vocabulary that is learned through the experience and play of song is astounding. Similar to a song tied to a memory. Exposure to diverse cuisine and music before birth both seems to be helpful too to the degree possible.
The number of words I have seen the little ones in my life absorb and use before age 1.5 to 3 leaves you a little speechless.
So many words, syllables, full sentences, and a way to reduce some of the little frustrations of not being able to express yourself.
So many words seem to musically originating in a few ways in hind sight:
First is reading, talking and singing anything you can as much as one can. Learning the sound of the voices around them is super valuable if present from the start.
Next is ending up being children of the digital co-parent and teacher Miss Rachel. Her content on YouTube was irreplaceable during the pandemic, and the bonus of speaking in song was one of the biggest gifts to learn.
Last, but not least is a Reggio Emilia child development / care program. If a parent has a chance to check out a Reggio Emilia centric child care program in regards to this topic of learning expression, more than not it’s an invitation to explore and play with lots of music and vocabulary. What’s neat is no place can be Reggio Emilia certified because it’s a town in Italy, so the methods can be freely taught, learned and used at home too.
What stands out is all of the children in Reggio Emilia programs are not the same, they are very ok with structure but just as adaptable with going with the flow of the fire alarm goes off. The rigour in fuelling music, dance, craft, curiosity, imagination, exploration, interaction and expression.
There will be some parents who find this approach a fit for them, (it’s a little different than Montessori which can be tough for some children to switch into a regular world program) as it focuses on helping each child bring out their uniqueness at their own pace.
I just sang, sang, sang anything that came to my mind. About mountains, clouds, courage, poo… It was just love pouring out of my heart, and I don’t know if it had something to do with it, but my kid started talking very early on and very well.
The best thing is was that I got to know him very soon, while my peers and their daughters/sons still were kind of communicating.
It seems to vary a lot in my experience. I have two kids who basically got the same treatment. One was eloquently talking in coherent sentences of 4 or 5 words by 18 months ("plane in the sky", "teddy come downstairs", "want something to eat" etc) and was understandable by others outside the family, the other kid was barely able to grunt single words at the same age ("mukk" instead of milk, "nur-sa" instead of nursery etc) that only we really understood as it was just incomprehensible sounds to everyone else
Singing made fuck all difference in that case (FWIW, the grunter is now totally fine as an older kid). Both were walking at 10 months so it was not like one was just "slow" at their milestones
As they say, every baby is different.
Yep. Having more than one kid disabuses us of the notion that our parenting was the driver in how awesome the kid turns out.
That said, I believe it's nature and nurture in the end.
Same here, two kids and zero strategies that worked with one apply to the other. Might as well be raising a dog and a dolphin.
> Might as well be raising a dog and a dolphin.
That made me chuckle.
But it's possible for siblings not to share any genetic material right?
A brother and a sister would obviously get different genes from their father and presumably there would be a 50/50 chance of them getting different genes from their mother.
There's four unique prototypes of children any two people can produce together.
> But it's possible for siblings not to share any genetic material right?
Kinda but the mother always provides the mitochondria.
I think that's an area of open research: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1810946115
But yes, that's a good distinction I should have made!
Oh that's cool. Now I have something new to read thanks.
I thought it was more like 2^23 unique prototypes?
Four prototypes?
Gamete cells get a random half of all genes from each parent so there's about 2 unique possible 'sets' from each parent, and 2*2=4. However because it's random I think you can only say there are 4 distinct completely unique possibilities in theory, but it would be very unlikely for that to actually happen in practice.
Each parent supplies half the genetic material. But each sperm and each egg have a randomly different set of one half of each chromosomes. So if you have 10 children chances are they each have a unique set of chromosomes.
Ahh, as in fully exclusive sets of genes
>Four prototypes?
gp said four unique prototypes
Probably genotype. Isn't it
My experience as well. My two are so different it’s hard to even parent at times as they need different kinds of attention. You can’t really give yourself in different ways at the same time. We recognize that one - being born in the lockdown environment - is likely different in meaningful ways than our first. Our first is helpful in she almost recognizes a difference.
Same. Have twins (fraternal) and their milestones are completely different despite pretty much identical treatment all things considered. They're also naturally better at certain things (twin A better at physical milestones, twin B better at social milestones).
Fraternal twins as well -- night and day.
We talked constantly to ours. Not about anything in particular. Just narrating everything we did. Constantly.
Our oldest was talking in full sentences at 1 year. It was astounding. Now, granted, it was stuff like, "I'm dunna det da fwad" but he was communicating in full thoughts at about the time he walked.
People always asked what system we used for teaching him. Our answer was always, "it's boring at our house so we talk a lot."
Everyone talks to their babies a lot. What does "it's boring at our house" mean?
> Everyone talks to their babies a lot
Most people talk to their babies at least sometimes, but observing families there are huge differences between how much people talk to their babies, how they talk to them, what subjects they talk about, how many different languages they use, etc.
Is this your observations or a study?
This is my observations, but there are also numerous studies demonstrating this if you go looking. For instance, a 2m search turns up https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3440540/
If they have a lot of siblings there is even more speech
I have a family with a lot of kids. Their neighbour was living with his small family somewhere else for a year where their kids had the sibling and grandparents to talk to.
The younger of two had speech problems.
Then they returned home and the neighbour kids made both of them to talk in a matter of weeks and months.
So is this confirming my point? Sorry, I am a bit confused who made who talk etc.
My relatives who had the bunch of kids and their neighbour who had two kids who wouldnt talk.
It's a joke. We live in a very rural area. So there's not much going on. We also don't do personal consumption devices (tablet/phone) in the home.
According to the article it would seem to be a matter of just throwing in as much variety of tone, inflection, and articulation as you can manage. The don't understand what you're saying anyway.
My career as a singer-to-babies was heavy on the Broadway tunes. "On the Street Where You Live" was big.
There is something magical about hearing a toddler mumble out an entire verse of Fly Me To The Moon or Autumn Leaves
Being better than your peers always brings a warm feeling.
Or not. I can sing but all my kids hated it. On the other hand, I always spoke to them using non-baby language, humor, and mannerisms, and they turned out to be incredibly good communicators.
Or maybe the scientists who specialize in child development and linguistics know something you don’t
Zany thought! I’m deeply offended you weren’t immediately convinced by my single piece of anecdotal data ;)
They should do a study to test if letting babies watch a show like Last Airbender instead of Teletubbies has a positive effect.
Perhaps because they were highly, highly experimental, the early little kids' edutainment shows, like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, just struck me as much better because they didn't insult children's intelligence, spoke to them as full persons, and had relatively rich and complex imagery, music, story, and humor. Which is why they're so watchable and beloved by adults.
And then Elmo happened and then Barney happened, and things have been on kind of a downhill slide into brightly colored, C-major MIDI music Cocomelon happyland.
Cocomelon songs give me some sort of whole-body repulsion if it comes on on shuffle in the car.
Classics that sound great sung by Raffi, Ella Jenkins and even Caspar Babypants are some sort of ear mush when done by Cocomelon, Kidz Bop et al.
Cocomelon are all sung in this weird smug condescending tone. It's really unpleasant.
Compare with Pokémon Kids TV, which sounds really cheerful, and you can hear the singer is really enjoying themselves. Also mostly the same classic children songs, but so much more enjoyable to listen to.
The generic midi versus funny experimental instrumentation play a part too.
Mister Rogers had an excellent jazz pianist doing all the music live in studio throughout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Costa
Real talk though. Kids and babies aren't stupid. So if you take the time to explain things, they pick up on more than you would believe.
Where many people go wrong is that they assume little kids are stupid instead of understanding that they lack context.
Yeah it seems to me like a human bias against ignorance. We have this notion that if people that don't know the knowledge that we know they must be dumb because, "everybody knows ____".
Kids are literally just the definition of inexperienced.
What total bs, infants try to guess the next token like all intelligent beings, everyone knows that.
That it's easier to learn via a song is quite obvious to me. I used to compose and record songs for poems I had to memorize in school, and not only those were the only ones I memorized with ease - those are also the ones I still remember today.
Reminds me of the chicken boy who spent four years as an infant in a chicken coop.
> he communicates by making a rapid clicking noise with his tongue
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/11/fiji.jennyfors...
> Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds
I feel this must explain something about the Pingu stop-motion animations, which feature a made-up babble-language that some people think is real-but-foreign.
But try avoiding death metal growl.
I've been doing that as well as beatboxing (inward bass, subharmonics). The baby is seemingly trying to replicate some of it, but obviously they're not word-like sounds.
This seems to be why people naturally default to sing-song when speaking to babies.
I thought that was cultural. There are cultures that don't talk to babies at all.
Does it explain why people do that? Are you suggesting we intrinsically know that singing to a baby is beneficial for learning?
If you believe that speech is a survival skill (which I would think most people believe) then anything that increases its prevalence or effectiveness would be evolutionarily selected for, right? We’re talking a 300-500+ Ky period, probably almost 2X that (depending upon the speech capabilities of our hominid ancestors), so plenty of time for evolutionary pressure to apply.
Yes, some shit comes built-in.
Does it count if we watch musicals together? Classics, like What's Opera Doc?
Personal recommendations are:
* Elmo’s Song
* Feist’s Sesame Street version of 1-2-3-4
I did the dwarf song (Far over the misty mountains)
"I love the mountains I loved the rolling hills.
"I love the flowers I love the daffodils.
"I love the fire side when all the lights are low.
"Boom dee Yada boom dee Yada boom."
My sisters and I always loved playing the duet of this song on piano.
Maybe more complex songs and songs with big words can make the baby more articulate. Maybe rap will have other effects.
I wonder what's the effect of playing baby songs and exposing the baby to dumbed down versions of everything.
Haven't there been a bunch of studies about this sort of thing? Lyrics aren't relevant to someone who doesn't understand language. Voice is just another instrument. Syllables are just notes.
Classical music is frequently cited as beneficial to learning and it has no lyrics. Nobody has ever suggested rap music is intellectually stimulating in any context, and they use a lot of words.
Even on rats in mazes, blasting them with Metallica seems to result in worse performance than Mozart. Myself, I can't work while listening to rap, rock or metal. Techno or classical only. Inducing a state of aggression/heightened arousal never leads to cogent thought (I can't work to Lords of Acid either!). There's a reason generals lead from afar.
I suspect music exposure may be related to autism in children, as a product of the spectrum of stimulation they're exposed to-- too much overall (urban life), too much of one type (war, domestic violence), or too little of any ("frigid mother"). The classical arts (a form of expression) are another thing that dropped off as diagnoses rose. We do not value art like we used to. Who owns a piano anymore?
> Nobody has ever suggested rap music is intellectually stimulating in any context
You’re allowed to be obnoxiously ignorant, but don’t fool yourself into thinking you speak for anyone but yourself.
> Nobody has ever suggested rap music is intellectually stimulating in any context, and they use a lot of words.
You need less DMX and more Wu-Tang [1]
Or Sage Francis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-9uhUBKah8
Or Killah Priest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu1ObsgF6ts
Or Run the Jewels (El-P and Killer Mike): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sff7Kc77QAY
Of course Aesop Rock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNrB6--KBqs
Graydon Square: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qJop-w0YAY
Joyner Lucas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WrMzFlLk7Q
MF Doom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_QQamQt5x4
Deltron 3030: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34k3GwQtbbs
Immortal Technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLBNMhzn8VI
I jumped on your comment to say what, no immortal technique?!
And he was there. Of course.
What an asinine comment dismissing an entire culture that was from jstarfish.
Don’t forget Common and also Arrested development / Speech too.
I am deeply offended on behalf of Aesop Rock right now.
When braggadocio to go from mostly jokey to gross
Corrode a homie 'til his probity is notably ghost
Sounds like some can be unhelpful: https://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1650352,...
Although IDK about the quality of this study
Abstract:
"Even prior to producing their first words, infants are developing a sophisticated speech processing system, with robust word recognition present by 4–6 months of age. These emergent linguistic skills, observed with behavioural investigations, are likely to rely on increasingly sophisticated neural underpinnings. The infant brain is known to robustly track the speech envelope, however previous cortical tracking studies were unable to demonstrate the presence of phonetic feature encoding. Here we utilise temporal response functions computed from electrophysiological responses to nursery rhymes to investigate the cortical encoding of phonetic features in a longitudinal cohort of infants when aged 4, 7 and 11 months, as well as adults. The analyses reveal an increasingly detailed and acoustically invariant phonetic encoding emerging over the first year of life, providing neurophysiological evidence that the pre-verbal human cortex learns phonetic categories. By contrast, we found no credible evidence for age-related increases in cortical tracking of the acoustic spectrogram."
The actual article simply says babies pick up on phonetic differences featured in rhyme and song. It says nothing about being crucial to learning.
Yep, the headline is a deliberate lie to make the story more appealing.
Ironically, you also added the word “deliberately” to make your comment more appealing without any evidence
Joining in a trivia dive...
> Ironically, you also added the word “deliberately” to make your comment more appealing without any evidence
Yes.
Fun.
A short comment is not the place for evidence.
I could criticise it for hyperbole but actually the thing I do not like is mor e gratuitous unesecsary adjectives....
Given a startling crisp headline for a mild wishy washy article it is reasonable to assume deliberation.
But is it a lie? Or measly an exaggeration?
I care a lot, it's good
You believe they accidentally misrepresented the scientists who never mentioned the concept in the headline? Come on.
There is an endless stream of these headlines that misrepresent the scientific claims in a way that just happens to seem designed to make the article more appealing. I'm sure it's all pure coincidence.
I don't know, I can't imagine they accidentally wrote that bit in the headline.
you turned
> "you added the word “deliberately”
into
> Ironically, you also added the word “deliberately” to make your comment more appealing without any evidence
with no evidence, theory of mind, nor sense of irony apparent.
We've changed the headline to a (shortened) version of the subtitle, which is more neutral. This is often the case.
Yeah the quote from the researcher is “Parents should talk and sing to their babies as much as possible or use infant-directed speech like nursery rhymes because it will make a difference to language outcome.”
Which, you know, sure, why not. Nursery rhymes are, I'm sure, great. But the idea that it is "vital" seems preposterous, as I'm sure many infants do not have anyone singing to them, and they still learn to speak.
Again, I'm sure singing to your baby is good stuff, but the headline seems like a stretch.
"Vital" seems a little strong after reading the article.
We've changed the headline to a (shortened) version of the subtitle, which is more neutral. This is often the case.