Say It Once, Say It Twice
August 28, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Yesterday I wrote about a study on ultrasonic vocalizations in BTBR mice, who are one “mouse model” of autism. The August 27th Science Daily describes another study that looks at how babies respond to words and vocalizations with repeated sounds. University of British Columbia post-doctoral fellow Judith Gervain and researchers from Italy and Chile documented the activity of 22 newsborns (2-3 days old) on hearing recordings of made-up words.
The researchers mixed words that end in repeating syllables – such as “mubaba” and “penana” – with words without repetition – such as “mubage” and “penaku.” They found increased brain activities in the temporal and left frontal areas of the newborns’ brain whenever the repetitious words were played. Words with non-adjacent repetitions (”bamuba” or “napena”) elicited no distinctive responses from the brain.
“It’s probably no coincidence that many languages around the world have repetitious syllables in their ‘child words’ – baby and daddy in English, papa in Italian and tata (grandpa) in Hungarian, for example,” says Gervain from UBC Dept. of Psychology’s Infant Studies Centre.
My son is, of course, quite a bit older; his speech is often repetitive, with not-exactly-verbal sounds or words (”sushi” used to be a favorite) said several times over. Over the years, I’m come to see Charlie’s repetitive language and babbling as not at all meaningless, but a very different (and difficult to decode) use of language. Sometimes I think he repeats a word over and over to practice saying it, or because he just likes to hear his voice saying something that he enjoys. It also often seems that he repeats words that he likes to comfort himself, via the thought of something pleasant, and pleasant to say. And certainly, good (good, good, good) to hear.
My boy really loves Spanish right now, and has a bit of interest in other languages as well, despite the fact that he doesn’t have the English language as down pat yet. I truly believe half the appeal is the way the words feel in his mouth, and I often catch him making up his own Spanish, or some language. This was a very interesting article, thanks for sharing!
I got this by myself, when I first learned about Carbone, Skinner and Verbal Behaviour. My best friend is from Pakistan, and I learned from her that Daadi, the grandmother who is a significant early carer in the extended family, and Mama and Maushi the maternal aunt and uncle; also significant.
The way I understand it, the child makes a random but very pleasing developmental noise in the crib, which they enjoy, and if it matches the “name” of whoever is nearby, that person re-inforces the noise with their reaction, so the typical kids tunes into this, and says it again.
Whereas, our kids might not find someone leaning into their face or jumping up and down very reinforcing, or they may be distracted by the excellent prism of light formed by the sun streaming through the crib ornament, so they do not “tune in” and say it again. That is until years later when the parent has learned to provide tailored reinforcement to suit the child, in return for hearing their name.
I used to have a list of developmental sequence of sounds for apraxia development. I think there would be a thesis in their for someone to compare the significant carers in a child’s life, culturally, with the sounds that make up their name. Granny, for instance is well down the list as it involves a double consonant and a very difficult consonant at that.
Compare that to ooma, which is what a dutch friend called her Grandmother, very easy.
Oh, and my friend from Pakistan and her husband call me “bhauji”, which I love!
xx
Ticket.
Well well well.
My parents are Gong Gong and Po Po to Charlie, and I guess I’d be MaMa and Jim BaBa—–the repetition’s a sign of affection.