It has long been known that babies learn a new language by first naming loose objects, glass, chair, teddy and that they use some tricks to facilitate this learning, such as associating new objects with things that are familiar to them.
Researchers of the University of Iowa, in the USA, They have analyzed the way in which 16-month-old children learn language and associate words with objects. One of the data derived from the study and that at first glance might seem curious but that then has its explanation, is that high chairs helped babies learn faster.
The researchers discovered that babies who sat on high chairs learned better than those who sat at the table to eat. Why? For one simple reason, because as a rule, babies in high chairs are allowed to play more with food and that is what helps them when it comes to learning.
Preliminaries
Babies know better those objects that are solid, with defined shapes, colors and odors, but this is complicated when non-solid objects, such as liquids, porridge, food in general, are involved.
Babies know some of the properties or characteristics of non-solid objects but do not know what to call them, he says Larissa Samuelson, Adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Iowa.
At two and a half years of age babies know an average of 14 words for non-solid objects, 12 of them are for food and the other two for rain and water. Therefore it was logical to think that everything babies know about non-solid objects is related to food.
The study
The researchers presented 14 non-solid objects, most of them food, such as porridge, juices, pudding, to 16-month-old babies. They called them with invented words but easy to pronounce for babies like "dax" or "Wug". After a few minutes in which the babies could manipulate at will, the objects were removed and taught the same objects, but with different shapes and presentations and they were allowed time to recognize them.
The researchers discovered that those babies in high chairs were able to recognize and name more objects and presented a better disposition to "investigate" what each thing was.
"It seems that being on a high chair encourages experimentation, because children understand that they are allowed to do so in that place," Samuelson explains.
The authors say that This essay shows how children's behavior, environment, and exploration help acquire early vocabulary. which is linked to a future cognitive and functional development later.
It may seem that the children are playing on the high chair, throwing things on the ground, getting lost, and that is really what they are doing, only in turn they are acquiring information on how things are. Information that will serve them in the future.
How we have already commented It is previously important for us to let children play with food. This study yields more data on its importance.
