Back and Forth Exchanges Boost Children’s Brain Response to Language

March 19, 2018

Anne Trafton MIT News  — A landmark 1995 study found that children from higher-income families hear about 30 million more words during their first 3 years of life than children from lower-income families. This “30-million-word gap” correlates with significant differences in tests of vocabulary, language development, and reading comprehension. Massachusetts Institute of Technology cognitive scientists have now found that conversation between an adult and a child appears to change the child’s brain, and that this back-and-forth conversation is actually more critical to language development than the word gap. Click link for information:   http://news.mit.edu/2018/conversation-boost-childrens-brain-response-language-0214