Reading stories to children are among the favorite activities parents do with their children. They read fairy tales and nursery rhymes to entertain and teach their kids. For moms and dads, who are doing this to their children, keep up the good work. For parents who are not, perhaps, it's time you do so, as a new study suggests that reading stories to kids build their brain.
Reading to children improves their language skills, and, with this, experts are encouraging parents to practice regular reading time with their children from birth, as it is assumed that habit improves the development of the children's brain, U.S. News reports.
"It's often said that reading builds brains," said Dr. John Hutton of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and lead researcher of the study. "That seems obvious, but you want to show that it's actually true."
Hutton and his team analyzed children from ages 3 to 5 years old by using a functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor their brain activity while they listen to a pre-recorded story.
Parents were then interviewed about "cognitive stimulation" at home and asked how frequent they read stories to their children. Their responses ranged from every night to two nights a week.
The researchers discovered that when children hear stories, some regions in their left brain, which are involved in understanding the meaning ad concept of words as well as in memory, are activated. These same brain regions have been found to be active when older children listen or read stories according to CNN.
Hutton and his team discovered that the more often children hear stories at home, the more brain activity they showed while listening to the pre-recorded stories in the research lab.
According to Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus, program director of the Reading and Literacy Discovery Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital and one of the authors of the said study, "The more you read to your child the more you help the neurons in this region to grow and connect in a way that will benefit the child in the future in reading."
Prior to this study, there has been a previous research, showing that children who are exposed to books at a young age do better on different measures, said Dr. Barry Zuckerman. They possess better vocabulary, higher literacy, can pay attention, concentrate better and are more equipped to enter kindergarten, CNN has learned.
Parents should take the time to read stories to their children regularly as Hutton said, "It's not just a nice thing to do with your child. It's important to their cognitive, social and emotional development," U.S. News notes.
