Babies capable of complex babbling, better adult readers?
Babies’ early production of speech may predict their subsequent literacy, according to a study published Wednesday in the open access journal ‘PLOS ONE’ by Kelly Farquharson of Florida State University in the United States and colleagues.
Children with difficulties in identifying letters are more likely to develop reading problems, but such difficulties cannot be discovered until the child is between 3 and 5 years old. The authors of this study investigated whether assessing language ability even earlier, by measuring speech complexity in childhood, could predict later difficulties.
Scientists followed nine babies from English-speaking American families between the ages of 9 and 30 months. They recorded the babble of each infant when the child interacted with their primary caregiver, specifically looking at the consonant-vowel ratio (CV), a demonstrated measure of speech complexity. The authors then met with each child again when they were 6 years old to examine their ability to identify letters, a known predictor of subsequent reading impairment.
They found that those children with more complex babbling as infants performed better when they identified specific letters on their later reading test. Although the sample size was relatively small and the nine children who participated were developing normally (meaning that the range of variability was restricted), these results may indicate a link between early speech production and literacy skill.
The authors suggest that, in the future, the complexity of infant babbling may be useful as an earlier predictor of children’s reading problems than letter identification tests, allowing parents and professionals to identify and deal more anticipation for children at risk of reading difficulties.
Farquharson adds: “This document provides interesting data to support a strong and early connection between speech production and later literacy skills. There is clinical utility in this work: We are moving closer to establishing behavioral measures that can help us identify reading disabilities earlier. ”