If you are trying to train your newborn to utter their first words, this study on child behaviour is for you The first words that children learn are not always what the parents want them to learn but something that drives the attention of the caregiver, a study has revealed.
The findings of the study were published in the ‘Journal of Child Language’ Among the first wears that newborns have uttered documented by the researchers across linguistic variety are “this” and ”that”. According to Amalia Skilton, a linguistics scholar and Klarman Fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) children’s strong drive to drive attention has its effects on learning to speak as well irrespective of the languages even if it differs structurally or is spoken in different social settings.
Children learn demonstratives first that help them call attention to objects such as ‘this/that and ‘here/there’ at a young age when they know very few words. The study found that the precedence of learning ‘this and there’ are as much as stereotypical first worlds like ‘mama’.
Demonstrative words play a significant role in language learning as it helps them draw attention, label objects and coordinate their actions, etc. Even in languages with small vocabulary like Ticuna as spoken by roughly 69,000 indigenous people in the Latin American countries, subjects aged one year said “this/that” or “here/there,” demonstrating the universal drive to share attention.
The study further shows that while very young children are eager to share attention, they have difficulty understanding others’ perspectives. Ticuna children learned “egocentric” demonstratives — equivalent to “this/here near me” — about two years earlier than “interactive” demonstratives like “that/there near you,” Skilton found. This means young people have trouble understanding how other people view objects and it is the function of cognitive development to understand a second-person perspective, not the learning of any particular language.
The study concluded that parents nor caregivers shouldn’t necessarily be concerned if kids under three years use interactive words incorrectly as it is fairly challenging for them to understand these words.
