A specific type of communication during early stages of growth can help improve a child's vocabulary. Researchers from the University of Chicago found that using words with actions could help build a strong vocabulary in children by the time they start going to school.
The study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that combining word clues with a visual effect, could help children learn words better and boost their vocabulary.
"Children's vocabularies vary greatly in size by the time they enter school," lead author Erica Cartmill, said in a news release. "Because preschool vocabulary is a major predictor of subsequent school success, this variability must be taken seriously and its sources understood."
According to the information provided in the study, previous research has proven that a child's vocabulary greatly depended on the number of words (quantity) he/she has been exposed to during early stages of growth, including the amount of time parents normally spend to talk to their children. Studies have also shown that children from higher socio-economic families have better vocabulary as their parents talk more to them during early stages of growth.
The current study considered 50 primary caregivers, children and their mothers to analyze the effect of quality verbal environment on the vocabulary development in childhood. All the children involved in the study were aged between 14 and 18 months and hailed from different socio-economic backgrounds.
Interaction between mothers and their children were filmed for 90 minutes daily. Later, researchers asked 218 adults to watch short scenes lasting 40-seconds from the videotape on mute. Based on a beep sound on particular situations, participants were asked to guess the word used by the parent. When the parent uttered a word with a visual clue, (For example, guessing the word "book" when the child goes close to a book shelf or takes out a book from it) the participants were able to guess the word correctly than guessing words without a visual word-clue.
Apart from that, scientists also noticed that some parents were more careful while adding word-clues (38 percent of the total time) when communicating with their toddlers than others (5 percent of the time).
"Early quantity and quality accounted for different aspects of the variance found in the later vocabulary outcome measure," the authors wrote, in a news release. "However, parents who talk more are, by definition, offering their children more words, and the more words a child hears, the more likely it will be for that child to hear a particular word in a high-quality learning situation," they added.
