Do not be annoyed when you see your toddler eating in a messy way. In fact, your child could be just showing signs of being a good learner.
A research conducted by the University of Iowa shows that tots as young as 16-months-old learn words through non-solid food items such as jams, jellies and oatmeal. The research team explained that gooey or runny things need to be felt to know what they are.
"With non-solid things you just can't look at them to know what they are - you really have to feel them, touch them or smell them to get a handle on what they are," Lynn Perry, who designed the study, told WebMD.
The researchers arrived at the conclusion after testing 16-months-old with 14 non-solid food items such as applesauce, pudding, juice, and soup. These toddlers were given the eatables with names 'dax' or 'kiv' and were told to identify the same food in different sizes or shapes.
The children happily got into the task. They poked, prodded, touched, felt, ate and also threw the items given to them, reported Medical Express. The researchers found that children splattered and interacted with the items given to them rightly identified them by the names.
"It's the material that makes many nonsolids and how children name them," senior study author Larissa Samuelson, associate professor in psychology at the UI, said.
The researchers also stated that children made to sit on high chairs were more likely to understand and identify the objects shown to them. "It turns out that being in a high chair makes it more likely you'll get messy, because kids know they can get messy there," Samuelson explained.
They further concluded that the study shed light on how behavior of the toddlers, their environment and constant examination helped them gain early vocabulary.
"It may look like your child is playing in the high chair, throwing things on the ground, and they may be doing that, but they are getting information out of (those actions)," Samuelson said. "And, it turns out, they can use that information later. That's what the high chair did. Playing with these foods there actually helped these children in the lab, and they learned the names better."
"It's not about words you know, but words you're going to learn," Samuelson said.
