Why babies talk more around man-made objects than natural ones

According to research babies are much more likely to engage in baby talk while interacting with artificial things than when interacting with natural onesInfants often communicate with protophones which are sounds resembling squeals growls or short wordlike noises such as da aga and ba These are considered the foundations of speech as they eventually evolve into full languageObjects play an important role in this process as the more vocalisation an object encourages the closer a young child is to talkingA new study led by the University of Portsmouth has looked at the relationship between protophones and things typically found at home to assess their importance for developing language skillsTo do this the team observed how often children aged 4 to 18 months who live in Zambia vocalised when using toys and household items and then compared it to how they interacted with natural objectsThey discovered the amount of protophones produced by the younger infants was significantly higher when engaging with manmade objects compared to sticks leaves rocks and bird feathersThey also found the children were more interested in household items such as mugs shoes and pens when given the choice between them and natural objectsLead author Dr Violet Gibson from the University of Portsmouths Department of Psychology said Our findings suggest that object features have an impact on the way in which young children communicateHere we observed that natural objects were less likely to encourage infants to produce protophones and as a consequence they may not promote language skill development as much as artificial objectsPreverbal infants seem to favour household items possibly because their features are designed for specific functional purposes or in the case of toys theyre designed to get a childs attention and spark their interestThis supports existing evidence that the use of complex tools in social interactions may have contributed to establishing the groundwork required for the emergence of human languageThe paper published in Natures Scientific Reports says that the ways in which parents engage with children when they interact with objects differs across cultures but the researchers found no indication that the examined behaviour of the mothers affected the amount of protophones producedCoauthor Developmental Psychologist Dr Eszter Somogyi added It is important to understand to what extent protophones are promoted in a natural environment from an evolutionary perspective because of their ties to language skills and developmentSome argue that vocal language about manmade tools may have led to a number of important advancements for our ancestors including speech evolution and a surge in manufacturing more sophisticated objectsThe study also examined whether children show more social gazing when using natural or artificial objects as its one of the first avenues of early communication The researchers found differences in the infants looking behaviours between the two object types suggesting that object features also shape nonvocal communicationThe infants in this study gazed at the mothers significantly more often when using natural objects compared to the household items particularly at a young age explained Dr GibsonIt might be because theyre far less interested in natural objects and look to their parents to assess their valueCoauthor Developmental Psychologist and Linguist Dr Iris Nomikou added Just like protophones social gazing supports learning as it gives an infant an opportunity to flag to a parent or carer that theyre not sure about something they seeThere is some evidence suggesting that objectbased communication is not limited to humans and that objectbased signals may be more significant than first thoughtThe University of Portsmouth team also observed similar behaviours in chimpanzees A new study published in Animal Cognition found evidence they use objects in diverse ways to communicate with each other and this may be shaped by social factorsThe authors observed that chimpanzees not only use objects in their broader social interactions but also use them in targeted ways to communicate with one anotherCoauthor Dr Marina DavilaRoss Reader in Comparative Psychology at the University of Portsmouth said There is a lot in common in terms of how individuals both human and animal make use of the physical world to communicateBoth studies have contributed to the theory that objects have a significant impact in how communication skills are developed but what is unique about them is the analysis of interactions with natural objectsThis opens an interesting new door in language evolution research and hopefully what we learned will contribute to future research on communication across different species and human culturesThe team recommends a more detailed analysis of facial changes to further explore the relationship between objects and infant behaviour as well as classifying objects based on colour size and shape rather than just natural and artificialThey also suggest it would be interesting to further compare this behaviour with less social species than chimpanzeesAlso Read Sawan 2023 Dos and Donts for devotees during ShravanThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever