Talking to toddlers boosts their language skills, Stanford study shows

New research from Stanford psychologists reveals that the amount parents speak directly to their toddler can make an incredible difference in the child's language proficiency and vocabulary. Just as young children need nourishing food to build physical strength, they also need linguistic nutrition for optimal development of language and cognitive abilities. New research from Stanford psychologists shows that by talking more to their toddler, parents help the child learn to process language more quickly, which accelerates vocabulary growth. It is well-known that socioeconomic status (SES) plays a role in language development. In general, children of lower-SES families have smaller vocabularies and lower language proficiency scores than more advantaged children. The new work helps elucidate the mechanism for these SES disparities, suggesting ways to reduce the language gap. Previous efforts to measure the impact of child-directed speech have involved observing a mother and child interact for an hour or so during child-centered activities.