The more words babies hear the faster their vocabulary grows, it has been revealed.
Researchers examined thousands of 30-second snippets of verbal exchanges between parents and babies and have found that what spurs early language development isn't so much the quantity of words as the style of speech and social context in which speech occurs.
Patricia Kuhl, co-author and co-director of UW's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences has revealed that the prevalence of baby talk in one-on-one conversations with children is linked to better language development, both concurrent and future.
Researchers at the University of Washington and University of Connecticut said that the more parents exaggerated vowels and raised the pitch of their voices, the more the 1-year olds babbled, which is a forerunner of word production.
Kuhl added that it's more important to work toward interaction and engagement around language as the interchange between parent and child plays a huge role in future language development.
They also found that 'baby talk' was most effective when a parent spoke with a child individually, without other adults or children around, and the relationship between baby talk and language development persisted across socioeconomic status.
The findings will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Developmental Science.
