Want a Smarter Baby? You Should Do This Every Day, Northwestern Researchers Say

 

There are many ways infants learn and discover more about the world around them, but few ways have more of an impact on their cognitive power than listening to words, one study has revealed.

Even before they can speak on their own, words spoken by people around them, especially parents, play an important role in the brain developed of babies, research from Northwestern University has revealed.

Words have a bigger impact on their minds than any other sounds including music according to the 2010 study as noted in this article.

The study focused on almost 50 three-month-old baby boys and girls who were shown a series of pictures of fish (and sometimes side-by-side with a dinosaur), accompanied by either words or beeps.

Do you talk to your baby? Research suggests that you probably should...

Do you talk to your baby? Research suggests that you probably should…

Results are ‘Striking’

 

The research showed that babies who heard words were better able to categorize the pictures (by looking at the fish longer than the dinosaur to signify they had categorized it) than those who simply heard tones.

…The researchers said the results were ‘striking’. The babies in the word and tone groups saw exactly the same pictures for exactly the same amount of time, but only those in the word group looked at the fish for longer” the article noted.

Previous research has also shown that babies can understand adults’ thoughts, and also that they often cry in “accents’ similar to their parents’.

A forthcoming article titled “Listen Up! Speech Is for Thinking During Infancy,” is expected to be published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences to expound on these ideas, and features one of the researchers, Northwestern University psychologist Sandra Waxman, along with New York University’s Athena Vouloumanos. 

 

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Categories: Alternative Medicine, AltHealthWORKS, and Holistic Health.
About Nick Meyer

Nick Meyer is a journalist who's been published in the Detroit Free Press, Dallas Morning News and several other outlets. He founded AltHealthWORKS in 2012 to showcase extraordinary stories of healing and the power of organic living, stories the mainstream media always seemed to miss. Check out Nick's Amazon best-seller 'Dirt Cheap Organic: 101 Tips For Going Organic on a Budget' by clicking here, as well as its sequel Dirt Cheap Weight Loss.