{"id":3324,"date":"2013-03-26T22:09:25","date_gmt":"2013-03-26T22:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.speechbuddy.com\/blog\/?p=3324"},"modified":"2016-03-22T08:55:58","modified_gmt":"2016-03-22T15:55:58","slug":"read-my-lips-how-babies-learn-to-speak-by-watching-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.speechbuddy.com\/blog\/language-development\/read-my-lips-how-babies-learn-to-speak-by-watching-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Read My Lips: How Babies Learn to Speak by Watching You"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Source: tutortime.com\u00a0<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

Babies have a lot to learn. Sitting up, how to grasp a toy, who is “mommy?” eating foods, and most importantly, how to learn to speak.<\/a> Learning language is the coordination of many skills – the brain must interpret the sounds and words it is hearing and map that onto objects and actions\u00a0in the environment. What you might not expect, however, is that for babies it’s just as important to read lips as it is to hear the language. New research suggests that babies learn to speak while watching other’s lips.<\/p>\n

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David Lewkowicz of Florida Atlantic University studied 180 babies in groups of them at ages four, six, eight, 10 and 12 months. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last\u00a0 year. While the researchers already knew that babies use social cues like looking toward’s the other person’s eyes or facial expression, they wanted to investigate lips in particular.\u00a0 To do this, they placed babies infront of a television set and showed videos of a woman speaking English or Spanish (all babies were\u00a0from\u00a0English speakers). During the video, the researchers used a head mounted device to track the babies’ eye gaze and duration.<\/p>\n

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Source: deafgeoff.com<\/p><\/div>\n

What<\/strong>\u00a0happened when babies heard each speaker?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the speaker used English, the four-month-olds gazed mostly into her eyes. The six-month-olds looked at the eyes and the mouth equally. Interestingly, the eight and 10-month-olds studied mostly the mouth while the\u00a012-month-olds, started shifting their attention back towards the speaker\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

However, when the babies heard Spanish,\u00a0researchers saw that\u00a0the 12-month-olds studied the mouth longer- similar to\u00a0the younger babies. These children struggled to interpret the information and needed the extra clues to make sense of the unfamiliar sounds.<\/p>\n

What we know about language development<\/strong><\/p>\n

This study aligns nicely with what we know about language developments in infants<\/a>\u00a0so far. Take a look at these infants, their babbling and social reciprocity are great examples of how\u00a0babies learn to make sounds\u00a0<\/a>to communicate information (even if they aren’t real words just yet).<\/p>\n