“We now think parentese works because it’s a social hook for the baby brain - its high pitch and slower tempo are socially engaging and invite the baby to respond.” But this new work suggests a more fundamental reason. We believe parentese makes language learning easier because of its simpler linguistic structure and exaggerated sounds. “We’ve known for some time that the use of parentese is associated with improved language outcomes,” said Patricia Kuhl, I-LABS co-director and professor of speech and hearing sciences at the UW. 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that parents who participated in individual coaching sessions used parentese more often than control-group parents who were not coached, and that coaching produced more parent-child “conversational turns” and increased the child’s language skills months later. Researchers examined how parent coaching about the value of parentese affected adults’ use of it with their own infants, and demonstrated that increases in the use of parentese enhanced children’s later language skills. Parents adopt its simple grammar and words, plus its exaggerated sounds, almost without thinking about it.īut if parents knew the way they speak could help baby learn, would they alter their speech?Ī new study from the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, or I-LABS, at the University of Washington suggests they would, to baby’s benefit. Used in virtually all of the world’s languages, parentese is a speaking style that draws baby’s attention. Using “parentese,” an exaggerating speaking style that conveys total engagement with a child, can boost an infant’s language skills and increase conversational “turn-taking” between parent and child, according to a new University of Washington study.
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