Can animal sounds help children's language development?

We have all entertained our babies by making animal sounds – mooing like cows, barking like dogs, crowing like roosters – and they love it! But did we know that encouraging them to imitate those sounds can help their early speech and language development as well as developing cognitive skills.

Bahrami, Cunningham and Leyland write about this in The Conversation.

They say that children start developing their linguistic knowledge as young as six months of age. Among their first words are often animal sounds.

Understanding and expression

While there are many ways to encourage speech and language development in children, one method is through animal sounds. Animal sounds can be used to promote communication development in all children, including those with speech and language difficulties.

Some reasons for this: animal sounds are simple, repetitive and are sometimes a common part of children’s environments (such as through pets or books). From an early age, children are able to recognize and respond to animal sounds. These sounds provide a unique way to introduce children to new words and concepts and can help them associate sounds with specific animals.

Because children like animals and are drawn to how they move and make sounds, they are likely to be interested in words related to animals.

Imitating animal sounds can help children learn new vocabulary and speech skills. It may also help children learn to use simple sentences such as “kitty meow” or “bee buzz.”

Detecting speech-language challenges

Not only is it important for parents to understand the significance of animal sounds for early speech development, it is worth noting that difficulties in a child’s ability to use and make animal sounds may provide a way to identify potential language difficulties at an early age.

Some signs of speech and language difficulties in young children include delayed speech, limited vocabulary, difficulty understanding questions and instructions, poor pronunciation of simpler sounds and words and difficulty combining words together after age two.

If parents think their children have difficulty in any of these areas, it is recommended they visit a speech-language pathologist as early intervention is crucial for promoting healthy communication skills.

Incorporating animal sounds

Parents can help their children develop speech and language skills by using animal sounds in different ways. One way is to make animal sounds while playing or reading books together.

For example, when reading a book about farm animals, you can make the sound of a rooster or a sheep to help your child connect the sound to the animal. Another method is to play animal sound-matching games, where children match an animal sound to the corresponding picture. This can be a fun way for children to learn new words and sounds.

Parents can also take their children on nature walks or to the zoo to hear real animal sounds, which can help them develop a deeper understanding of their world.

Foundation for speech, language development

Animal sounds may seem like a simple part of children’s speech and language development, but they have much to offer and provide a fun and engaging way for children in learning and exploring the world.

So, the next time you are playing with your child, do not forget to moo like a cow, ribbit like a frog or neigh like a horse. It could make a big difference in your child’s learning and development!

Content provided by The Conversation.

Image provided by Freepik

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.