• fosho@lemmy.ca
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    4 hours ago

    regardless of a child’s inherent language skills I would argue that it’s a detriment to baby talk to them. surely the earlier they receive regular communication the sooner they are going to learn it.

    • Ephera
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      3 hours ago

      I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure, it’s not that simple.

      For one, you might not have much to chat about with your baby, so doing baby talk might actually get in more language training.

      But then baby talk is also very emotionally charged. So, it might help with emotional development, or simply make the baby pay attention for longer and therefore actually help the language development.

      Well, and then it also still depends on the baby. For example, this research suggests that babies with autism react differently to baby talk: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2022/toddlers-responses-to-baby-talk-linked-to-social-cognitive-language-abilities