Teaching parents about communication strategies with their infants has a direct impact on their childrens’ language development according to new I-LABS research published online in Developmental Science. Parents instinctively use a special style of talking with their infants, called “parentese”. However, by coaching parents on the how and why of its importance when the infants were 6 and 10 months of age resulted an increase in parents’ language input to their children, and in children using significantly greater number of words at 14 months compared to children of parents who did not receive this coaching. Such a parental intervention has the potential to positively improve all childrens’ language outcomes.
Watch a short video overview of this research on YouTube.
