Futurity.org – Ums and uhs help toddlers learn words.
A new study finds children learn to pay closer attention when parents flounder while talking to them. Processing language, especially words they have never heard before, can be difficult. If a child’s brain waits until a new word is spoken and then tries to figure out what it means after the fact, it becomes a much more difficult task and the child is apt to miss what comes next, says Richard Aslin, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester and one of the study’s authors. “The more predictions a listener can make about what is being communicated, the more efficiently the listener can understand it,” says Aslin.
