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Home › Articles › Speech and Language Issues › The Power of Talk

The Power of Talk

Why It's OK to Be Chatty Kathy Around Your Baby

By Teri Brown

Pages:  1  2  3  

(New Harbinger Publications, 2005), says children learn to talk by listening to others talking to them.

"Research has shown that if parents engage a child's attention and talk to them a lot, they learn to say more words faster," Dougherty says. "In fact, researchers from Chicago found that children at 2 years of age who had chatty mothers said twice as many words as children whose parents cared for them silently."

A Study Verifies the Power of Talk

The study, called "The Power of Talk," found that young children under the age of 3 who hear at least 30,000 words a day will thrive, showing better school performance and a higher cognitive functioning. The study is based on findings from breakthrough psychologist Bette Hart and Todd Risley.

"Infoture's 'Power of Talk' study confirmed the findings of Hart and Risley – that children exposed to an enriched language environment had significant advantages in terms of language development," says Dr. Khanh-Van Le-Bucklin, Irvine Pediatric Consultant to Infoture. "The magic number is 30,000 words, which is equivalent to about 18 1/2 readings of Cat in the Hat. The study confirmed that children who heard more adult words on a daily basis scored better on standardized language tests than children who heard fewer words a day."

Other interesting findings from the Infoture study include the following:

  • Overall, girls hear about 8 percent more words than boys.
  • Mothers do most of the talking (78 percent compared to 22 percent for fathers).
  • On average, firstborn children hear about 10 percent more words than latter born children.
  • Parents overestimate how much they speak to their children.
  • A child's talkativeness mimics that of he parents. Talkative children tend to have more talkative parents. Quieter (taciturn) children tend to have quieter parents.

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