Researchers explore how children learn language

Small children learn language at a pace far faster than teenagers or adults. One explanation for this learning advantage comes not from differences between children and adults, but from the differences in the way that people talk to children and adults.

For the first time, a team of researchers developed a method to experimentally evaluate how parents use what they know about their children's language when they talk to them. They found that parents have extremely precise models of their children's language knowledge, and use these models to tune the language they use when speaking to them. The results are available in an advance online publication of the journal of Psychological Science.

"We have known for years that parents talk to children differently than to other adults in a lot of ways, for example simplifying their speech, reduplicating words and stretching out vowel sounds," said END