Members in the Media
From: KNX 10.70 News Radio

UCLA Study: Babies in Bilingual Households Respond Better to ‘Baby Talk’

Babies will pay more attention to baby talk than regular speech, regardless of which languages they’re used to hearing, according to a study released today by UCLA’s Language Acquisition Lab and 16 other labs around the globe.

The study found that babies who were exposed to two languages had a greater interest in infant-directed speech — that is, an adult speaking baby talk — than adult-directed speech. Research has already shown that monolingual babies prefer baby talk.

Some parents worry that teaching two languages could mean an infant won’t learn to speak on time, but the new study shows bilingual babies are developmentally right on track. The peer-reviewed study, published by Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, found bilingual babies became interested in baby talk at the same age as those learning one language.

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