Introduction and summary:
The following article titled “Why the way we talk to children really matters?” (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191001-the-word-gap-that-affects-how-your-babys-brain-grows) is retrieved from the Science rubric of the BBC. It was published October 1st, 2019 and written by Melissa Hogenboom.
Melissa Hogenboom is an award-winning science journalist at BBC Global News, where she popularises key notions of science (including psychology) through telling evidence-based stories for a general audience. Particularly, she is interested in focusing on what reflects the changes in our society. She has already written hundreds of articles, made films and has reported for radio and television.
In this written work, the author tries to show that speaking to children is important for their brain development. However, Melissa Hogenboom is not a psychologist nor a professional in children’s brain, thus she went through research articles, she interviewed professionals of this domain and went into the field, to see some implementation of research’s results.
As a starting point, she refers to an article, dating from the mid-90s, written by two researchers (Hart, & Risley, 1995), which concluded that there is a big difference in language acquisition depending on socio-economical status. The poorer the children’s background, the fewer words they know. Thus, at age 4, the gap could reach 30 million words heard between poorer and wealthier children. Although this study can be somewhat criticized (e.g. small non representative sample size), it has the merit of highlighting the fact that language acquisition is a crucial issue concerning children’s developmental trajectories. Even though children from all backgrounds live in an environment full of conversations, some researchers pointed out that children do not profit from discussion if it is about adults’ matter.
Recently, some researchers (Romeo & al., 2018) have precised the link between children’s conversational exposure and language-related brain function. It emerges that turn-taking conversations, with an active role of the child, lead to a better level at comprehension tasks as it enhances white matter connections in the language region of the brain.
Even if some children from low-income families seem vulnerable concerning language acquisition (Rowe, 2008), nothing is hopeless. On the contrary, other researchers (Hirsh-Pasek & al., 2015) pointed out that poverty alone did not predispose children to poorer language skills. Indeed, among the children (all from low-income families) of their experiment, those who interacted in more conversations at age 2 showed more language skills at 3 than the others.
As a result, Melissa Hogenboom explicits the fact that not only it is important to speak to them but that the way you do so is even more decisive. She even states the importance of quality over quantity.
Moreover, she gives guidelines to improve parenting knowledge by suggesting practice advice like asking open-ended questions to children. For instance, some successful projects have increased the number of conversations and language level of children using simple postings in supermarkets (like “Where does milk come from?”) or games dedicated to children and their caregivers.
Analysis:
This paper definitly targets a non-scientific audience, as it is not a literature review, nor has it got the usual aspect of scientific papers (it contains spoken citations, the point of view of the author, …). Instead, it gives in-depth information on speech learning in children, with examples of scientific experiments.
We found this article relevant and interesting on the matter. Although we already knew how language develops in children from our academic background, this paper refreshes key information that might have been forgotten had we not read this article.
As we got this formal information from college professors, we could assess the veracity of this article and we deemed it as worthy of interest. Indeed, even though it does not follow the grammar of a research paper, it still follows the basic principles: there is scientific proof of whatever is said backed up by citation of research articles and all information given turns out to be accurate.
We liked this specific article because it is thought-provoking on the socio-ecomic gap, though we do not think it was the author’s first intention. Indeed, the author insists more on how to commonly talk to children and give parents good advice. As developmentalists, we focused more on the interindividual differences presented in this paper and found it appealing. The fact that whether you were born with a high or a low socio-economic status influences your development is disturbing. Especially if the language development is affected. Actually, the developmental aspect that affects the future life the most is the language, as it helps us represent the world to ourselves and communicate to each other. A lack of words can lead to less precision, and therefore less accuracy. Moreover, if you lack vocabulary when talking to someone, you are often judged as someone with less knowledge and therefore less interesting and you are less prone to have higher places in society.
As such, having an affected language development in infancy might lead to a poorer place in society. As stated before, it is inadmissible for us that where someone comes from destines their life from the day they are born.
What we appreciated is that, although stating troubling facts on the socioeconomic gap problem, this article is hopeful and gives much advice for parents and authorities. Melissa Hogenboom discusses many different activities that are supposed to provoke conversations between children and parents such as posters with simple questions (e.g. “What is your favorite vegetable?”) or interactive games.
Related informations:
In addition, in France, we could probably quote the report of the first 1000 days, which, directed by Boris Cyrulnik since 2019, aimed at explaining the importance of developmental topics, such as language, in order to be taken in account in children health policies.
As far as one of us is concerned, this article is relevant for an upcoming internship which will focus on equal opportunities about language acquisition.
Words we have learnt:
- to groan : gémir
- shrouded : enveloppés
- to “coo” : roucouler
- gurgles : gargouillis
- with awe : avec émerveillement
- babbles : babillages
- giggles : rires
- turn-taking conversation : conversation à tour de rôle
- geared toward : orienté vers
Bibliography:
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Adamson, L. B., Bakeman, R., Owen, M. T., Golinkoff, R. M., Pace, A., Yust, P. K., & Suma, K. (2015). The Contribution of Early Communication Quality to Low-Income Children’s Language Success. Psychological Science, 26(7), 1071–1083. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615581493
Romeo, R.R., Leonard, J.A., Robinson, S.T., West, M.R., Mackey, A.P., Rowe, M.L., & Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2018). Beyond the 30-Million-Word Gap: Children’s Conversational Exposure Is Associated With Language-Related Brain Function. Psychological Science, 29(5), 700-710. doi : https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617742725
Rowe, M. L. (2008). Child-directed speech: relation to socioeconomic status, knowledge of child development and child vocabulary skill. Journal of child language, 35(1), 185–205. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000907008343