
Back-and-forth exchanges boost children’s brain response to language - vezycash
http://news.mit.edu/2018/conversation-boost-childrens-brain-response-language-0214
======
le-mark
Both of our kids are very verbal, they were speaking very clear sentences when
a lot of their peers where barely intelligible for example. We are constantly
amazed at their vocabulary and clever turns of phrase they come up with on
their own.

My personal goal has been to make sure they feel like they have a voice and
get to be heard. They have agency in their lives; choices and consequnces.
We've always talked to them like people and encouraged them to use their
words. When they were little I'd repeat back what they said and respond as
clearly as I could, asking for clarification or whatever. They've been read
over a thousand books by the age of 5.

I don't know how much of that is nature or nurture, but we definitely make
time for them, and have the means to do so.

~~~
sundvor
Awesome work.

This made me think. My 7y boy has ASD/ADHD. When he talks, which is often, he
talks constantly and all the time. It can feel like an onslaught; is very
tiring over time.

We've always been reading to him, and he enjoys words - and learning new
vocabulary. I'm quite particular about grammar also, and he's always open to
being learning this, being corrected, and he'll even correct his own after a
few times. It's amazing to hear him "work" Google Home, modulating his
questions until he gets what he wants.

So he's obviously got a very sharp brain, but from a parent's point of view it
can take a lot of effort to stay engaged at that "11th hour" point - specially
when tired and dealing with non-compliance.

Would appreciate if anyone has pointers here, if this resonates. We need to
teach him that communication isn't just Transmit, but Transmit/ Receive
(Tx/Rx).

~~~
le-mark
My in laws do this thing were children are mostly ignored. When adults are
talking or watching tv, the adults should not be interrupted. In practice they
ignore other adults most of the time too. Very boarish, dysfunctional people
in general. Conversations with them are very one sided and shallow. So kudos
to you for not relagating the kid to non-person status like that.

One of the things we focus on is taking turns, giving other people the
opportunity to talk, and not interrupting each other. I thinks it's easier
with multiples because they tend to regulate this among themselves. Like our
two will object if they're interrupted, especially the littler one.

~~~
JadeNB
> My in laws do this thing were children are mostly ignored. When adults are
> talking or watching tv, the adults should not be interrupted. In practice
> they ignore other adults most of the time too. Very boarish, dysfunctional
> people in general.

Surely these two (ignoring children for adult conversation and ignoring other
adults) do not always go together, and need not be conflated. My wife, who is
Italian, told me that, in the European model of parenting with which she is
familiar, children _are_ expected to defer to adult conversations.

While I have no children, I see no reason that this couldn't have a positive
effect, analogous to that of not being an only child—whereby children learn
that, though they are important and valued, their desires do not always come
first, and they need to learn to be respectful of others. Your comment seems
to suggest, by contrast, that it is obviously and necessarily a poor way to
raise children.

(I also don't think that ignoring other adults, at least in some circumstances
where they want my intention, is necessarily a bad thing, but that's probably
more a factor of my bias towards being alone than of any parenting
philosophy.)

~~~
dsnuh
I have four kids (two of my own, and two stepchildren) and I generally agree
with this style of parenting. I feel like there is a bit of a "cult of the
child" in America (where I am) where it is a competition now to raise the most
perfect children, with the most perfect Instagram ready activities all the
time, each a potential STEM subject genius with world changing thoughts, etc.
etc. It's tiring to watch if you are on social media, which I feel is one of
the big drivers of the new attitudes toward kids. I see parents using their
kids for virtue signalling all the time.

------
jcoffland
This is one reason why too much phone time can be detrimental to child
development. Modern kids are losing out on verbal skills because they are able
to "hide" in their phones and avoid talking to adults. It is sad when parents
fail to say to their kids, "hey, an adult is speaking to you, pay attention
and answer them."

~~~
rimliu
What makes you think that without phone kids would do talking instead of
gazzilion of other activities? Also I am sure having access to iPad helped my
daughter to learn way more than I thought she could at that age (e. g. English
names for colors; count in English and the alphabet song — before she even was
three). Just to clarify — we do not speak English at home.

I had no phone or computer. Most of my time was spent in books. (Not bad for
the vocabulary, I guess).

~~~
user5454
> having access to iPad helped my daughter to learn way more than I thought
> she could at that age (e. g. English names for colors; count in English and
> the alphabet song — before she even was three)

While that may sound awesome, I'm not so sure it's better in the long term.
Your daughter would've learned the English names of colors and the alphabet
eventually anyway. OTOH using phones and pads changes our brains, making us
worse and worse at keeping our focus. We become addicted to that something is
always changing or moving until reading a book becomes hard. I'd rather start
from the other side, reading a lot of books for the kids, letting them learn
at a slower rate but with retained ability to focus.

~~~
dangerface
> OTOH using phones and pads changes our brains, making us worse and worse at
> keeping our focus.

Thats not true:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38896790](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38896790)

------
tudorw
"electronic reminders to parents to engage their children in conversation",
did I wake up in Black Mirror ?

~~~
noxToken
No. Though seemingly grim, this is actually a good use for technology for
people who don't talk too much.

I don't speak much. Unless I'm in a group where conversation is free-flowing
among all parties, then I'm not saying much. I will ask a direct question to a
coworker. I have no issue with talking about something specific. However I
can't contribute much to small talk unless someone else is driving the bus. In
turn, that makes me a great listener. This is where the electronic reminder
would come in handy for me.

I've played with nieces, nephews, cousins once removed, and when I was
younger, I had a volunteer position with the Boys and Girls Club. I have no
problem listening and participating in activities. But newborns and infants
need you to speak to them even though they may not speak back. An infant
cannot (for all intents and purposes) drive conversation with an adult, so my
natural inclination is to make faces, imitate sounds if they're making any,
and play.

I've seen it while out shopping. Mothers and fathers flying solo with their
infants in the cart are getting groceries as usual. However, they're narrating
their actions to the child so that the child may get a better grasp on the
language. Something like this would have never occurred to me.

This isn't a dystopian future where we need robots to remind us to breathe.
It's leveraging technology to help every live the best life that they can.

~~~
tudorw
I already see a fairly grim reality around me where adults are spending their
time engaging with electronic media over and above engaging with the children
around them, theirs or otherwise, you actually state in your reply that you
have a natural inclination to do the right thing, I think other options, such
as a poster in a place where large numbers of parents gather, or on the
wrapping of a child oriented product should be explored before applying a tech
oriented solution.

~~~
noxToken
You make two separate points. There are people who are wrapped up on their
phones instead of engaging with their children. That's a separate problem
that's not necessarily addressed here.

Your other stated problem seems to be with setting a digital reminder. I don't
understand how a poster is superior (or even on par) in this case. If I see
the poster, then I can act on the reminder. Otherwise, it would still need to
be in the back on my mind for me to act on it. A small alarm is always with
me, and it tells me exactly what I need to do.

If we're splitting hairs about tech-oriented, what about an egg timer? Those
can be completely mechanical, but it offers the same functionality in much
more noticeable method.

It's like a company putting up posters reminding employees to get up once an
hour to stretch, take a break from the screen, and walk out your limbs for a
few minutes. If I'm head down in my work, time could fly by before I even
realized that it's been two hours. If my watch vibrates at 45 past the hour
every hour, then the reminder will always be present.

~~~
tudorw
posters work for people who do not have smart phones.

------
cinspicuous
> _The important thing is not just to talk to your child, but to talk with
> your child_

Taking this to the next level, it's not about about talking per se but having
meaningful communication. This entails noting interesting things, fun things
and helping the child get what they want, helping the parent get what they
want, deciding what to want next, etc. The ability to talk co-evolves with the
content i.e. with the reasons to talk.

~~~
Angostura
My brother bought up his kids beautifully, and when I asked him what the
secret was, he simply said 'talk to them like people' which worked for us too.

My kids do tend to ask me things me now and prefix it with 'not one of your
long answers, though dad'.

~~~
cinspicuous
Detail Dad!

 _> talk to them like people_

Except that most adult/social conversations are restrictive.

~~~
Angostura
Not compared with stereotypical parent-child conversations where it is easy to
slip into command-based dialogue: "I want to do this", "you can't".

~~~
cinspicuous
True. And I hope we're moving away from that.

------
paulsutter
This is true for adults as well. I have great retention from speaking Japanese
with taxi drivers, but the 900 words in my quiz program evaporated quickly.
You need to really use it.

~~~
ourmandave
When my daughter was considering an International Studies degree she went to a
student seminar put on by a retired Field Service Officer.

He explained how they teach you a language with 5 hours of class every day
with 3 students per teacher.

Then take you to the local town or village to interact with little or no help.
Like, sink or swim.

~~~
mikekchar
I'm fairly opinionated about language acquisition, having spent 5 years
teaching English as a foreign language. However, my experience of failing to
learn French after 13 years of school study, while at the same time succeeding
to learn Japanese after 0 classes of Japanese lessons influences me even more
:-)

I'll use English as an example because I happen to know lots of trivia about
it. I think it is similar for other languages. The average educated adult
native English speaker knows about 20,000 "word families" of vocabulary. A
"word family" is similar to a word, but the word family includes all
conjugations of the word and all compound words (so the "police" in "police
station" or "police state" is part of the same word family).

The average 3 year old knows about 1500 word families. By age 5 they know
about 5000 word families and improve their vocabulary about 1000 word families
per year (about 3 per day) until the age of 20. Some people have vocabularies
up to around 60,000 word families (for example if they have a very technical
job).

When people study in school, they tend to study lists of vocabulary up to
1000-3000 words (not word families). These lists often include ridiculous
words like "unemployment". Anyone studying a foreign language should look at
their word lists. If you have 5000 words, you should be asking yourself,
"Would a 5 year old know and use this word?" And then you should be asking
yourself, "If this list has this word and a 5 year old would not use it, what
word is _not_ on this list that the average 5 year old would know?" Then you
should learn that word :-) (bodily functions are usually included in that list
and I have to say it is extremely important if you ever need to go to the
doctor!)

There are only about 1500 grammar structures in basic English (although there
are _lots_ more set phrases that can be used in grammatical situations) Basic
fluency starts with simply being able to use the language in a variety of
situations. One of the problems with many language courses is that they start
the student memorising grammatical structures (mainly because it is really
easy to test and makes it appear as if the student has made progress).

However, I recommend finding a 3 year old to talk to. Take note of the grammar
that they can use (it's not much!). Take note of the vocabulary that they can
use. When second language learners are at the 1500 word vocabulary level,
_this_ is what they should be realistically aiming for. Between the years of 3
and 5, children acquire most of the common conversational grammar. They can do
it quite naturally because they can _speak easily_ from about 3 years of age
on. Children of that age do not require specialised instruction on language --
their parents are more than sufficient.

Finally, a couple of important notes. It takes children about 12 years before
they are able to have adult level conversations. Before that, they are
unlikely to understand the news, or even movies that are not aimed at
children. Even then, it takes until they are in their teens before they start
speaking and listening like an adult. We tend to think of children as having
underdeveloped brains, but in reality I think they simply lack the language
skills. Children that have exceptional language skills at a young age are
often thought to be exceptionally bright and often it is not the case.

Even if you learn as fast as a native child, it will take you 15 years to be
able to learn adult level conversation and reading skills. Luckily, second
language learners can actually learn a language faster than children, but most
learners have completely unrealistic expectations (by an order of magnitude).

Finally, there is a period in language acquisition (known as the "closed
period") where you can generally understand what's going on, but you can't
speak. Virtually everybody goes through this phase in their first language and
most second language speakers also go through this phase. Some polyglots have
found mechanisms for bootstrapping through the closed period, but in my
experience it takes a considerable experience with language learning to figure
out how to do that.

In general, sink or swim works fine if you are past the closed period and is
absolutely dreadful if you are not. There is a reason why children are tired
and cranky and prone to emotional outbursts. It's incredibly tiring and
frustrating not to be able to communicate. (OK, there are other reasons too
;-) ). It is super important to accommodate the closed period (which will be
different for each student -- and can last years).

My personal technique is to teach fluency without worrying about specific
vocabulary or grammar. I don't use lists, but rather use simple conversations
as the guide for what to talk about. I use grammar as a tool to help explain
language, not as a subject in itself (although learning grammar _taught
completely in the target language_ is a super fun way to learn the language if
you happen to enjoy grammar, as I do). My main goal for beginners is to get
them past the closed period. After that, you just need to grind (whether
that's watching children's TV shows, or reading books, or having conversations
with accommodating people). One famous comic/talent in Japan (Pa-kun) came
from the US and learned Japanese to practically native level by simply going
to the bar every day and talking to the regulars there. It's a great technique
IMHO.

Class size can be much larger that 3 because the students can ideally talk to
each other. In fact, students should be jabbering away all the time. Teachers
need to model the language, but they shouldn't be the ones speaking all the
time. For me, an ideal class size is between 8 and 12 (depending on the
students). Very small class sizes have he downside that it sometimes puts
unreasonable pressure on individuals, which lengthens their closed period. I
have specialised techniques to deal with up to about 20. Past that, I never
found a mechanism that works (but I only did it for 5 years, so there may be
someone who knows of a way that works).

~~~
1ba9115454
You nailed it for me there. I'm in the closed period I guess.

I've had a lot of 1 on 1 in my second language but quit. I was fed up of
getting corrected all the time. Makes conversation a bit dull when the teacher
interrupts.

Might try a course with a whole bunch of people. See if that helps.

~~~
mikekchar
If you'd like a recommendation, I would try free reading. "Free" reading means
to pick up anything you are interested in reading and read it :-) The main
thing is to be able to comprehend what you are reading. Sometimes the level of
what you want to read is higher than your level and so you can't read it. In
that case, I tend to scan the text to find vocabulary I don't know. Usually
I'll try to find the first 20 words I don't know. Then use a "spaced
repetition software (SRS)" application (I recommend Anki
--[https://apps.ankiweb.net/](https://apps.ankiweb.net/)) to memorise the
vocabulary. Go back to the text and try to read it again. If you can
understand it, then no problem. If not, try to find the grammatical
constructions that you don't understand and look them up in a grammar
dictionary. These days you could probably just as easily plug it in to Google
Translate and get good results, though (warning: haven't tried it -- I haven't
learned new grammar in a long time ;-) ). Then put that example sentence in
your SRS app.

It's slow going at first (it will take you a few days to get past your first
unknown 20 words, then a few days for the next), but authors tend to use the
same vocabulary, grammar structures and expressions in their book, so by the
time you get to the middle of the book, you will be able to understand it
without having to do the above. At that point, just keep reading -- as long as
you understand what they are talking about, don't worry if you don't
understand a word here and there.

Another quick tip if you happen to have a grammar dictionary or a traditional
textbook: Put all the example sentences in your SRS app. Drill from your first
language (I suppose English) to your second language. Throw away the text book
:-). I found that memorising a whole mess of example sentences got me out of
my closed period really, really fast. After the example sentence was
memorised, almost exactly a week later it was popping out of my mouth. No idea
why.

Finally, for me, part of my problems getting out of the closed period was just
having to concentrate too hard on physically forming the words. I fixed this
by going to karaoke 2 or 3 times a week :-). Find the lyrics to a song you
like in the target language. Get a recording of it. Sing along with the
recording. Get some slow songs and some fast songs. Because the song is
unforgiving about pacing, it forces you to form the sounds at a natural speed.
You can also do the same thing with an audio book if you find singing
embarrassing.

Apart from studying kanji, I think this is _all_ I did when learning Japanese
(BTW, comic books are great reading material because they are completely
conversational). There are also language exchange meetups in most big cities.
Before I moved to Japan, I went to a Japanese language meetup and met a few
expat Japanese people. I hung out with these people -- sometimes we would hang
out in English and sometimes in Japanese. Here in Japan, the best English
speakers I know regularly seek out and hang out with the expat community here.
If you go out once or twice a week, eventually you start to be able to say a
few things.

But I think the best advice I can give you is to surround yourself with your
target language. If you are reading for pleasure, do it in your target
language. If you are watching a movie or TV, do it in your target language.
Seek out and make friends with people who speak your target language. If you
are cooking, then look up recipes on the internet in your target language.
Just make a "target language bubble" and live in it. This will accelerate your
growth super fast.

------
gumby
Indeed, and the conversation (allowing the child to experiment and reinforce
its use of language) extends to reading as well: I remember we never "read" to
our child, but always had an engagement '"Pippi jumped onto the roof", hey, do
you believe she really could do that?'

------
maxent
The Hanen Centre has used this back-and-forth as the foundation of their
teaching for over four decades. Check out their take on the same study:

[http://www.hanen.org/Helpful-Info/Articles/power-turn-
taking...](http://www.hanen.org/Helpful-Info/Articles/power-turn-taking.aspx)

We took one of the Hanen Centre parent education courses (“It takes two to
talk”). I can’t recommend it highly enough - best training I’ve ever received:

[http://www.hanen.org/Programs/For-Parents/It-Takes-Two-to-
Ta...](http://www.hanen.org/Programs/For-Parents/It-Takes-Two-to-Talk.aspx)

------
allcentury
I always assumed the word gap was because of conversation, not that high
income earners were reading a dictionary aloud.

That said, are high income earners more available for conversation? Seems like
a good question for economic researchers within child development.

~~~
mac01021
It may not be availability so much as conversational style.

Anecdotal (I would most likely qualify as high-income for the purposes of that
study): Most of the time when I am with my now-18-month-old daughter, I give
her a lot of authority. If she can say where she wants to go or what she wants
to do or what she wants me to do, then in general that's what happens. I have
to imagine that creates a great incentive to learn to express your thoughts.

------
renox
Not so easy to do when you have several children, especially twins..

------
angel_j
File under wisdom lost. I don't know if this asinine study and obvious result
should give me hope or dismay. Did people really need a study to tell them
that interacting with children is better for them? Countdown 7 years until the
public sector of schooling adopts this into state-approved pedagogy.

