Giggle Games Galore

One of the true blessings that come with being human is the ability to laugh. Adults often don’t realize that children begin honing their own comedic skills at impressively early ages. Supporting your child’s attempts at humor really is important because at its core, humor is creative. Even if your child is simply retelling a joke she’s heard elsewhere, she’s had to do a bit of mental gymnastics herself to grasp the humor. And on those occasions when she comes up with her own joke, she is demonstrating both mental flexibility and creativity no matter her age.

Find the particular giggle games that you and your baby both enjoy, and play them often so that your baby has a chance to enjoy predicting what comes next. For some babies and at some ages, these might primarily involve touch and movement, either in mild forms (like being wrapped and tickled in a towel after the bath) or no-so-mild forms (like being tossed in the air). Other babies may find weird noises emanating from your mouth particularly hilarious or absolutely crack up at seeing their big brother make funny faces.

Whatever the routine, remember that babies at all ages are good at learning what to expect. In fact, the giggling usually starts leaking out in anticipation of the event. The opportunity to form expectations like these, apart from the actual tickle or toss, is pleasurable all by itself.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Number Sensitivity Begins Early

Here’s another detour from my traditional topic of baby sign language. Human infants come into the world looking for things to count. Mother Nature, it seems, figured out eons ago that if the human species was going to reach its full potential in this domain, she’d better arrange for the process to begin as early in life as possible. Given every human baby’s natural sensitivity to numerosity, it’s ironic that so many adults have grown oblivious to how pervasive numerical information is in everyday life. As a result, many parents overlook easy ways to give babies food for thought in this very important domain.

It’s easy to make numbers an obvious feature in any activity that involves repetition. Take the ever popular tickle game. The tendency for most people is to engage in triplets: “Tickle, tickle, tickle!” Try repeating the tickle triplets five or six times in a row, and then abruptly change to sets of two. Or do the opposite. The idea is to surprise your baby with this sudden change in quantity. You may not get an outward sign that she’s noticed, but trust me, she has. This same strategy can be applied to lots of different activities: blowing raspberries on your baby’s tummy, bouncing him on your knee, shaking rattles, splashing bathtub water. Almost any simple action that makes your baby smile can provide grist for the number mill!

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Modeling Imagination

Here's a tip I've drawn from Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love, the book Dr. Susan Goodwyn and I wrote following publication of our book about signing, Baby Signs.

The natural inclination of children is to become less rather than more creative as they get older. However, there are ways you can support the development and survival of imagination as you child moves from birth to age 3 and beyond. One way is to model how to play make-believe. Young children naturally imitate what the important people in their lives do, from eating with utensils to dressing up in grown-up clothes. So doesn’t it follow that seeing you use your imagination will inspire them to do the same? At the same time you’ll also be giving them hints about how to go about pretending—that puppets can talk, that “plots “ can be silly, that blocks can be cars, and that even big people think it’s all a great idea.

Your efforts should begin at a very early age. Simply sipping imaginary tea from a cup or taking an imaginary bit of food from your baby’s cookie is a start. Many parents engage in such play intuitively, but our research shows that many who should—particularly parents of boys—do not. This type of play has the extra benefit of promoting language development because, unlike simply manipulating parts of toys, make-believe scenarios naturally involve talking. In fact, we can’t think of a single downside to joining your infant, toddler or preschooler in playing make-believe.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Signing with Babies : An Easy Intervention

A new research study from Stanford University has revealed that low-income children have already fallen significantly behind in verbal vocabulary development by 18 months. In addition, Dr. Anne Fernald and her students found that this negative standing in comparison to higher-income children keeps growing. Specifically, by 2 years of age, the more affluent children had learned 30 % more words in the intervening months than had the lower-income children. One reason for the gap, research shows, is because low-income children simply hear fewer words directed at them each day—and learning a language depends on hearing that language!

Why is this early vocabulary gap a concern? One important reason is that vocabulary size at early ages is a good predictor of the ease with which children learn to read—and reading, by anyone’s estimation, is a key contributor to doing well in school. Another important reason is because verbal language is the vehicle by which children can ask questions and understand answers—also a key contributor to success academically.

Why do I bring his up in a blog about signing with babies? The answer is probably obvious to those of you who already enjoy signing with your child. Our NIH-funded research has shown that signing speeds up verbal learning, and one reason it does so, is because signing by a child pulls words from the adults around him or her, thus contributing to the overall number of words the child hears.

Think about how you would respond if your baby, during a stroll in the park, suddenly turned to you with a smile and signed “butterfly.” Would you ignore the sign or simply say “Yeah, that’s a butterfly”? Not likely. What is practically inevitable is a reply like “You’re right! That’s a butterfly! Oh look, there’s another butterfly. See how yellow they are?” etc., etc., etc. Without that sign, in contrast, parent and baby would be more likely to proceed in silence. In other words, signs enable babies to initiate conversations about things in which they are interested, and when one is interested in something, one is more likely to pay attention to what is said in return.

The larger point I’d like to make given what I’ve said above is that introducing low-income families to signing is an easy and inexpensive intervention that can help close the vocabulary gap. What’s more, signing would also bring lots of other proven benefits--like lower frustration and happier parent-baby interactions--benefits that make life easier and more satisfying to parent and baby alike.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!  

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Make Any Time Rhyming Time

I recently ran into a mom who felt that nursery rhymes were too “old fashioned” for her child. That has motivated me to share a piece of information that has been in this blog before but clearly bears repeating for today’s audience.

Reading requires something called “phonemic awareness,” a component that is one of the more challenging prereading skills that young children must master. What is it? Quite simply, it’s the awareness that the words they hear people say—even single syllable words like “cat”—are actually made up of individual sounds that are quickly combined: “ka+ah+t”. Kids gradually catch on; however, researchers have discovered that there is an easy way to speed the process along: listening to nursery rhymes and other simple poems and songs. In one classic study, researchers in England found that the greater a child’s knowledge of nursery rhymes, the more phonemically aware the child was. Why? Because the fact that rhyming words share their final sound draws attention to the existence of individual sounds in words. And what make this finding even more significant is that the greater a child’s phonemic awareness, the better his subsequent reading skills.

The lesson is clear. To help your baby start reaping the benefits of rhyming from the moment she is born, sing her to sleep with lullabies. Include songs and games with lots of rhyming words in your daily interactions. Captivate her attention by emphasizing the rhyming word pairs. Keep his enthusiasm up by substituting family names into the rhymes (e.g, “Daddy and Julia when up the hill….”). Use pictures of several objects with rhyming names to make a homemade mobile to hang over her crib or picture to tape to the wall. And don’t forget that tongue twisters (like the ever popular “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers…”) works in a similar way but focused on initial rather than ending sounds.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

"Baby Minds" Webinars

Did you ever wonder what goes on in your young baby’s adorable little head? I’ve never met a parent who hasn’t! Well, no one can tell you precisely, but over the past few decades developmental psychologists have come up with a wide variety of clever techniques to open that window at least a little bit. And what they have discovered about early thinking skills is really fascinating.

Some years ago, Dr. Susan Goodwyn and I made this research the basis of a book for parents entitled Baby Minds: Brain Building Games Your Baby Will Love. And this week, I’m drawing from that book, in addition to more recent work, to present a webinar with a similar name: "Baby Minds: Nurturing the Seeds of Intellectual Development." This is a 2-part webinar. In the first part (Weds., October 16, 2013 at 6PM Pacific Time), you’ll learn about how babies are Involuntary Observers, Natural Born Mimics, and Little Scientists. In Part 2 (Weds., October 23, 2013 at 6PM Pacific time), I’ll round out this modern vision of the baby to talk about how babies are Pattern Predictors, Creative Communicators, and Motivated Memorizers. In each case, I’ll be sharing not just what we know, but also how parents and teachers can use this information to create easy activities to help nurture these seeds of cognitive development.

Hope you’ll join me for what I’m going to try my darnedest to make a fun and informative opportunity to learn more about your baby. For more information and/or to register, click here.

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

A Little Change of “S-Pace”

Let's take a detour from our usual focus on baby sign language. Here’s an idea that helps take advantage of the recognition memory skills—the ability to vaguely recognize something as familiar—that babies bring with them when they are born. Have you ever noticed how many habits you’ve fallen into when it comes to “putting” your baby places? For example, it’s quite likely that you routinely put your baby to bed with his head at one particular end of the crib and keep the high chair in the same lace in the kitchen. Why? Who knows! But one thing we do know is that, as a result, your baby comes to expect to see specific things when he runs his head to the right (like the window).

Those spatial relations are well established in his memory for where things happen, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, such predictability is comforting at any age. Why not, however, a least once in a while, shake things up a bit by changing his position? Now, for example, he has to find the door of his bedroom by turning the other way. By challenging your baby to rethink these spatial memories, you provide food for thought that helps him make his memories about the space around him even richer and more flexible and sophisticated.

By the way, if you'd like to hear more tips that can help you support your baby's thinking and remembering skills, join me for my 2-part webinar, Baby Minds: Nurturing the Seeds of Intellectual Development (Birth to 12 Months). Part 1 will be Weds. 10/16/13 at 6PM (Pacific Daylight Time) and Part 2 a week later (10/23/13) at the same time. (Cost $10 includes both Parts, live and/or recorded.) Click here for more info.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Hidden Benefits of Reading the Same Book Over and Over

Even if you are bored with a particular book, reading the same storybook many times over is really good for children. In the case of dialogic reading (incorporating conversation outside of the written text into your reading time) going over the same story more than once enables a child to learn new vocabulary items well enough to us them in answer to questions. This is exactly what researcher Monique Senechal found when she read 3-year-olds a story either one time or three times. Toe two extra times make a big difference in the ability of the children to remember the meanings of ten new target words—like “angling,” “fedora,” and “satchel.” What’s more, when the three readings also included questions to the child (a la dialogic reading), the number of words remembered went up even higher—to average of almost 70 percent.

If that’s not enough to convince you, a study by Peter Jusczyk and Elizabeth Hohne has even shown that by the end of three readings, babies as young as 8 months recognize as familiar the specific words they’ve heard in the story. Unlike the 3-year-olds in Senechal’s study, babies this young aren’t learning what the words actually mean. They are, however, learning to recognize the sequence of sounds from which these words are made. Even at 8 months, then, rereading the stories leaves an impression on a baby’s mind.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

How Times Have Changed….Thank Goodness

If you want to feel proud of what you already know about how to raise an emotionally healthy child, compare your beliefs to those of a very prominent 1920’s psychologist, Dr. John Watson.

"Treat them as though they were young adults…Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning. Give them a pat on the head if they have made an extraordinary good job of a difficult task. Try it out. In a week’s time you will…be utterly ashamed of the mawkish, sentimental way you have been handling it [up to now].” (J. Watson, 1928, p. 81-82.)

Your “gut level” negative reaction to his advice is in part a product of the wealth of very good research on emotional development from 1970 onward. Thanks to modern technology (computers, video cameras, the internet), advances in our understanding of how the brain works, more complex statistical tools, and the entry of thousands of very bright, passionate young scientists into the field, we now know a lot more about child development than we our parents and grandparents did.

Here are just a few of the advances in policy toward children that would not have happened were it for not for research by hard-working, dedicated social scientists around the world:

• Fathers are now encouraged to attend the births of their babies and newborn babies often “room in” with their mothers.
• Hospitals no longer ban parents from their sick children’s sides but, instead, encourage involvement in care.
• Many hospitals employ “Child Life Advocates,” individuals trained to support hospitalized children emotionally when parents can’t be present.
• Adoption policies now advise adoption as soon as possible after birth instead of waiting until age 2 when the child’s “innate nature” has supposedly “unfolded.”
• Pediatricians recognize the importance of correcting visual and auditory problems as soon after birth as possible in order to avoid permanent deficits.
• Head Start and Early Head Start programs are making a significant difference in the lives of millions of children in terms of both emotional and intellectual development.
• Parental leave policies are becoming more and more common.
• To ensure adequate emotional and physical care, adult-infant ratios in child care facilities are a matter of law
• The Children’s Television Workshop started the trend of educational TV for children with the creation of Sesame Street.
• AND…last but definitely not least, thanks to our Baby Signs research

, there is growing recognition of the benefits of encouraging babies to use signs before they can speak!

Let’s hear it for research!

Happy Signing! (and don’t forget to look for us on Facebook)

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Playtime is a Time to Talk, Talk, Talk

Although we frequently recommend playing make-believe with your child because it nurtures vocabulary development and conversation skills, there is definitely a place in the playroom of every child for non-fantasy toys—manipulative toys in particular. The adjective “manipulative” is used to describe toys where the goal is to make something interesting happen by manipulating components. For example, a typical busy box has handles to pull, windows to open, switches to push, wheels o spin. Toddler versions of these include age-old favorites such as stacking rings, puzzles, jack-in-the-boxes, and shape-sorters.

These toys are wonderful because they promote problem solving as well as provide entertainment. Just keep in mind that conversations needn’t turn totally boring when moving parts become the focus. Make sure to go beyond unimaginative phrases like “how about that one.” Be creative. Describe the colors and movements. Talk about the characters that pop up. Make comparisons to other toys. Ask your baby which parts she likes best. Talk about who gave the toy to your child. And don’t forget to extol your baby’s virtues with more than just “Wow!” when she does a good job. How much longer can it take to add, “You’ve sure made Mickey Mouse pop right up! He pops out like Donald Duck did. Remember how Donald Duck jumped up when you turned the wheel? Let’s show Daddy when he comes home.” As we are always telling toddlers to do, “Use your words!”

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Signing in Action: A Hair-Raising Experience

One of our research findings, in fact, the finding that surprised us the most, was a significant effect of signing on intellectual development. When we tested the children from our federally-funded study when they were 8 years old, we found significantly higher IQs among those who had signed as babies compared to those who had not.

Why might that be? Well, the fact that we know signing provides a jumpstart to verbal language development is certainly an important factor. Another contributor, we believe, is that the signing provides babies a way to ask questions and gain information about the world around them well without having to wait for words. The following story—which was emailed to us years ago from a mom in the Netherlands—provides a great example. See what you think.

As 14-month-old Sam sat next to his mother on the bus, a young man with his hair in dreadlocks sat down across the aisle. Obviously fascinated, Sam turned to his mother and patted his head, his sign for HAT. “Oh, honey I know it looks like a hat, but it’s really hair,” whispered his mom, simultaneously rubbing some of her hair between her fingers, the sign for HAIR. Sam turned back to the man, stared intently, and again caught his mother’s eye, this time patting his head with more vehemence. By now the young man had become curious enough to ask what was going on. “My son thinks you’re wearing a hat and doesn’t believe me when I tell him it’s really your hair,” Sam’s mom explained. In response, the young man invited Sam to feel his dreadlocks for himself. So Sam did, and no sooner had his fingers touched the young man’s hair than Sam raised his hand to his head and with eyes wide with surprise rubbed some strands of his own hair between his fingers. The message was as clear as if he had spoken the words: “It is hair!”

Imagine such mini lessons multiplied throughout the day and you’ll have a sense of what I’m talking about. Signs enable babies to gather information about things they are specifically interested in, thereby helping them start amassing knowledge without having to wait for words. The cumulative effect is more advanced intellectual performance down the line.

Happy Signing! (and don’t forget to look for us on Facebook)

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

This Little Piggy Went to Market

I recently posted in this blog a description of an experimental study I did at UC Davis to see if toddlers would use a sign to indicate that they remembered something that had happened 2 months earlier. (They did.) I certainly wasn’t surprised by our findings because I had long been hearing stories from parents indicating real life examples of babies using signs to indicate memories. Here’s one of my favorites:

A roly-poly potbellied pig was 15-month-old Brandon’s favorite exhibition at a street fair in a neighboring town he had never visited before. In fact, Brandon was so enchanted with the pig that he sued his sign for PIG (fingertip to nose) countless times during the day to let his parents know he wanted to see it again…and again…and again. His parents happily obliged, enjoying the fact that he could actually tell them what he wanted. But something even more amazing happened six weeks later. Brandon and his parents visited the town for a second time, and even though there as no street fair and not pig, Brandon suddenly began to sign PG with great glee. At first his parents were confused, but then they realized they were standing in the exact spot where the pig had been six weeks earlier! The fair may have been a distant memory to his parents, but it was clearly still vivid to him. Wow! Where his parents impressed! Not only had he remembered a pig seen long ago, but he had also remembered the exact greasy spot by the sidewalk where it had been, showing his parents just how smart their baby was!

Brandon’s is only one of many stories showing signs being used to talk about memories. Do you have examples of your own? I’d love to hear them! Send them along to me via email at info@babysigns.com (putting Baby Signs in the subject line to make sure I get it.) and maybe they’ll make it into a future posting right here!

Happy Signing! (and don’t forget to look for us on Facebook)

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program and Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

A Study of Signing and Memory

Ask a parent what signs they are most anxious for their children to learn and the answer is likely to be EAT, DRINK, MORE, and ALL DONE—the “Mealtime Signs.” There’s no doubt that these signs are important to both parent and child, but other signs are important as well. Babies use signs for all sorts of reasons besides wanting to eat or drink. One of my favorite uses of signs is to enable babies to talk about their memories.

It comes as a surprise to many parents (and many researchers) that babies and toddlers are, indeed, capable of laying down memories for salient experiences and retrieving those memories after a considerable time. We tested this capacity ourselves in our lab at the University of California at Davis a decade or so ago. Here’s what we did.

Fourteen-month-olds were invited to our lab for a study about signing. While the parent and child were waiting for the experiment to begin, they were in a room with a live mouse named “Mickey” contained in a colorful “house” cage. Not surprisingly, the children were inevitably drawn to the mouse.

When the experiment itself began, the mouse was removed and parents were asked to try teaching a set of signs to their child over the next 2 months. The signs represented different categories (e.g., requests, nouns, adjectives) and included the sign for MOUSE. The parents were told we were interested in which signs were more easily learned.

In reality, the experiment was a test of whether the babies would use a sign to indicate a memory. Specifically, when the families returned to the lab 2 months later there was no mouse in the room and our video cameras filmed the children to see if they would use the MOUSE sign to ask about it, thereby indicating that they remembered the presence of Mickey during their earlier visit.

What did we find? Yes, indeed, we saw enough of the toddlers sign MOUSE with quizzical expressions (or even combined with a WHERE? sign) that we knew we had succeeded! Toddlers can indeed remember an event that occurred 2 months earlier and can use a sign to “say” so!

So, resist the temptation to stop with the Mealtime Signs. Teach signs for lots of other things your baby might want to talk about—and remember!

Happy Signing! (and don’t forget to look for us on Facebook)

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

The American Academy of Pediatrics on Media and Babies

Just last week I gave a webinar for our Baby Signs® Instructors that focused on the American Academy of Pediatrics’ position in regard to TV/Videos/DVDs for children under 2. As many responsible parents know, the AAP went on record about 2004 with a recommendation against any TV-type viewing for this young age group.

The issue is important to us here at Baby Signs because we have 6 DVDs designed to teach signs to babies. We produced these DVDs specifically for babies—that is, with very simple vocabulary and images, slow action, animated characters and real babies, and lots of repetition of the signs. What’s more, they work! Babies love them and both they and their parents learn signs from them.

Back to the AAP. What has been the result of the 2004 prohibition? Quite simply, irresponsible parents continue to expose their children to hours and hours of TV, while responsible parents feel guilty about even the smallest amount of such viewing they allow their babies. It’s become a “dirty little secret” that Mom puts on a DVD to gain 30 minutes of respite from supervising her toddler.

What many parents don’t know, however, is that the AAP relaxed its position in a 2011 up-date. In their own words, “The AAP realizes that media exposure is a reality for many families in today’s society. If parents choose to engage their young children with electronic media, they should have concrete strategies to manage it…. It is important to set limits and create balance at an early age” (2011, p. 4).

We certainly can’t argue with that! We also can’t argue with another of their observations—that many DVDs purporting to be “educational” really aren’t. That’s where the Baby Signs® DVDs shine! We know they teach signs to the babies, and we know from our federally-funded research that signing promotes language and intellectual development. In other words, we know they are truly “educational!”

In fact, the AAP itself has endorsed signing. Here’s a statement from their 2011 book, Heading Home with Your Newborn: “Infant sign language really does deliver on its promise of improved communication….It’s easy to see why so many parents swear by it, why child care centers include it in their infant and toddler classrooms, and why it has become so commonplace as an activity of daily learning” (p. 173-174).

Conclusion: While parents should, indeed, set limits on TV/DVD viewing by their babies and toddlers, at least in the case of the Baby Signs® DVDs, they need never feel guilty about gaining 30 minutes of peace and quiet by turning one on!
Happy Signing! (and don’t forget to look for us on Facebook)

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Playing Pretend: Talk about Fun!

baby sign language

Just last week in this blog I took a detour from talking about to discuss how important pretend play is to children’s cognitive development. The point I made then is that playing pretend encourages a form of mental “gymnastics;” the child is learning to keep in mind not only what he or she is doing in the present (e.g., feeding a bottle to the doll) but also that the doll represents a real baby and the pretend milk represents real milk. That’s not something a 12 month old can do, but by 18 months, the development of this kind of mental flexibility is underway.

Well, here’s another benefit of pretend play for your child’s development. Research shows that helping children engage in pretend play is an easy way for parents to support language development. In this case, what we’re talking about here is participating with your toddler or preschooler in pretend scenarios—like talking to Grandma on a toy phone, pretending to make and eat imaginary foods, playing with dolls or trucks in ways that involve imagination.

Why does not only encouraging but actually participating in this kind of play with your toddler or preschooler benefit language learning? The answer is because pretend play is language rich when parents are involved—both in terms of language you say to your child while playing and language your child says to you in response. For example, a tea party with your child might introduce new vocabulary words like cups and saucers, tea and teapot, the names of friends or new foods, etc. Or play with a toy plane might involve words like take-off, landing, pilot, the names of destinations. In addition, your questions to your child (for example, “Who are you inviting to our party?” or “Where is the plane going?”) require your child challenges your child to draw from his or her existing vocabulary to provide appropriate answers. In other words, these kinds of pretend interactions help children learn to both understand more language and to talk themselves.

So, whether your child is into tea parties or trucks, baby dolls or train tracks, make it a point to get down to his/her level (both figuratively and literally) and join the fun. Who knows? You might actually have fun exercising your own imagination!

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Pretending is More Than Just Child’s Play

There’s a common theme to a great majority of popular kids’ toys: Pretending. Whether it’s a baby doll, a tea party, a toy fire engine, or a make-believe cell phone, the goal is pretending. In fact, what researchers call “fantasy play” is so common among the 1- to 6-year-old crowd that most adults just take it for granted without appreciating what an impressive developmental milestone it represents.

What’s the big deal? If you think about it, feeding pretend milk to a pretend baby requires a child to insert an extra mental step in comparison to an equivalent real situation where she is drinking milk herself or tipping her bottle up for Mom to have a sip. In the case of the baby doll she is also keeping in mind that the baby doll represents or symbolizes a real baby and the pretend milk represents or symbolizes real milk. How do we know she’s pretending? She’s clearly not surprised or upset when no milk comes out and the “baby” simply continues to lie there!

This same kind of mental gymnastics—which researchers refer to as the ability to use and manipulate mental symbols—is involved when children pretend to cook, have a tea party, crash toy cars, or fly toy planes. And development of this skill doesn’t stop here. As toddlers turn into preschoolers, their pretend play not only gets more elaborate but also gets more “abstract.” No longer is it necessary to play with something that closely resembles the real object (as a doll does a baby or a toy car does a real car); the preschooler now has the mental flexibility to pretend that a soft pillow is a baby that can be rocked or a block is a car that can go “vroom vroom.” In fact, development of the ability to pretend (or imagine) continues to get even more abstract until no physical object is needed at all—the arms can rock a totally imaginary doll!

So, the next time your child begins some kind of pretend scenario, appreciate it for what it is: a sign that the brain in that adorable little head is evolving in a wonderful direction, that is, toward increasingly sophisticated imagination—which, after all, is an important foundation of the valuable talent we call creativity.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Our Study Still Stands Tall!

One of our Baby Signs® Instructors called my attention last week to an article by a Speech Pathologist who was questioning our research findings that signing helps children learn to talk. She was basing her criticism on a study by researchers in England who claimed to be replicating our study but finding no positive effects when the verbal development of their signing group of babies was compared to that of their control group of babies.

Whenever such criticisms arise, the first thing I do is get my hands on the supposedly contradictory study and read it carefully. So that’s what I did, and just as I suspected, the authors didn’t have a leg to stand on! Let me outline a few of the more blatant differences between their study and ours, differences that explain why they didn’t find the language advantages we did. This post will be longer and a bit more “academic” than usual, but please bear with me. We want every parent who’s signing with a child or even contemplating doing so, to share the unwavering confidence we have in our own research.

Issue: Sample Size. The smaller the sample size (number of subjects within two groups), the harder it is to demonstrate a statistically significant difference between them, especially when the behavior in question varies dramatically from subject to subject as early language development does.
• Our study--Goodwyn, Acredolo, & Brown (2000): 32 in the Signing Group, 39 in the Control Group.
• English study: 10 in each Signing Group, 10 in the Control Group.
Conclusion: Goodwyn et al. was more likely to detect a facilitative effect, the English study more likely to miss a facilitative effect genuinely there.

Issue. Length of the study. Language development in its early stages is notoriously variable across children. The longer data collection continues, the more likely that trends will be visible.
• English study: Ceased data collection at 20 months.
• Goodwyn, Acredolo, & Brown (2000): Continued data collection well past 20 months (i.e., 24, 30, and 36 months).
Conclusion: Goodwyn et al. (2000) was more likely to discover a meaningful trend in the direction of a facilitative effect of signing.

Issue: Number of Signs Learned. To determine whether signing by infants facilitates learning to talk, the “signing group” has to have actually learned a meaningful number of signs. The larger the number of signs learned, the better equipped the study is to determine if signing makes a difference. If a baby learns only a handful of signs, one wouldn’t expect much of an effect on learning to talk.
• Goodwyn, Acredolo, & Brown (2000): Average number of signs learned = 20.3 (Range 9-61 signs)
• English study: Highest average number of signs learned across ages was 8.67 (Range 2-17 signs)
Conclusion: Goodwyn et al. was in a better position to test the effect of signing because the subjects in their study actually learned many more signs.

Why does the number of signs a baby uses matter to verbal development?

• Signs pull language from adults. Babies learn words from listening to adults. When a baby uses a sign (e.g., BIRD) upon seeing a bird, the adult responds with lots of words (“Yes! That’s a birdie! We call that a robin. See, there’s another bird. Oh, the bird flew away.”) The more signs a baby knows, the more likely this is to happen.

• Signs enable babies to pick the topic. Again, babies learn words from listening to adults. When a baby uses a sign, it starts a conversation about something the baby is interested in, thereby making it more likely the baby will listen to and learn from what the adult says. The more sign a baby knows, the more likely this is to happen.

• Signing excites babies about communicating and motivates them to move on to an even better system--words. The more signs a baby is able to use successfully to communicate, the more motivated he/she is to get better at communicating—that is, to move on to words.

• Signs increase a baby’s interest in books. Babies learn new vocabulary from reading books with parents. Because signs enable babies to be active participants in book-reading (naming pictures with signs), babies are drawn more strongly to books, thereby exposing them to more new vocabulary items. The more signs a baby knows, the more likely this is to happen.

Issue: Why did children in Goodwyn et al. (2000) learn more signs?

• Instructions to Parents. The instructions to parents clearly can affect the number of signs learned.
o Goodwyn, Acredolo, & Brown (2000): Parents were encouraged to choose whatever signs they thought their child might be interested in learning and to add new signs at any time. This freedom addresses the fact that not all babies are interested in the same things.
o Kirk et al. (2013): Parents were told to stick to a specific set of first 10, and then 20 signs no matter what their child’s interests.

• Amount of modeling. The more a sign is modeled by the parent, the more likely it is to be learned by the child.
o Kirk et al. (2013): Data indicate that parents on average modeled a sign “a few times a week to once a day.” This isn’t nearly enough!
o Goodwyn et al. (2000): Modelling rate was not reported. However, the likelihood that parents would, in fact, model signs was increased by the fact that they were given specific toys and books depicting objects represented by signs.

Given all the points I’ve outlined, I hope you can see why we disagree so strongly that this new study somehow negates our findings of a facilitative effect of signing on verbal development. And even if you hadn’t read this posting, all you would have had to do is talk to parents of preschoolers who used signs as babies to feel confident that signing is not just “okay,” but actually really good for language development.

Happy Signing! (and don’t forget to look for us on Facebook)

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

How Long Does a Sign Last?

One of the questions that our Baby Signs® Instructors hear frequently from parents is how long a sign stays in a baby’s repertoire before the word appears. Of course, the answer is that it varies enormously. If the sign is substituting for a relatively easy word like “ball” or “more,” the word may appear relatively quickly. But even then it depends on the sound that the word starts with—“b” and “m” and “d” sounds being considerably earlier to appear than “j” and “l” and “sh” sounds. Of course, if the word is long and complicated, like “hippopotamus” or “alligator,” the sign is likely to stick around longer.

The answer to how long a sign is used also depends on what strategy a child tends to favor. Our government funded research revealed that some children use signs to free them to work on learning words for other things. For example, a baby who has signs for “dog” and “more” may be content to rely on them and make learning the words for “cat” and “all gone” a higher priority. In other words, these babies tend to hold on to their signs for quite a while, using them to increase the number of things they can talk about.

Other babies seem to use signs to speed up learning the word a sign stands for. In these cases, the word appears relatively quickly. The logic lies in the fact that the more frequently a baby uses a sign, the more often adults respond by saying the word, thereby providing more opportunities for the child to learn it.

So, there are lots of answers to the question of how long signs last—especially given that all these strategies can play a role in a single child’s journey from sign to words!

Happy Signing! (and don’t forget to look for us on Facebook)

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

When to Start Signing

One of the most frequent questions our network of Baby Signs® Instructors hear when they give their Parent Workshops and Sign, Say & Play® classes is “When should we start signing with our baby?” Truth is, there’s no “perfect” time to start signing. Over the years we’ve noticed three different approaches parents take to the issue of when to get started. Each has its own advantages. I will describe all three approaches so you can decide which approach will work best for your family.

Birth – 8 months
Some parents start early – at birth or sometime during the first 8 months. These parents want their babies to get lots of exposure to both signs and words from the very beginning. And they like getting into the habit of signing early on. If you know that you have the patience and the persistence to use signs yourself even though your baby is unlikely to sign back until she’s a bit older, then starting early may be a good choice for you.

8-12 months
Many parents choose to wait until their babies are 8-12 months old to start signing. The advantage of starting during this time period is that babies are closer to the age that they can start using signs themselves (usually around 10-11 months). If you like to see more immediate results, starting during this age range may be best for you.

12+ months
Some parents wait until their babies are 12-18 months old before they start using signs. Even at these later ages most babies still don’t have the words to express all the thoughts they want to share. The advantage of starting during this time is that babies are likely to learn signs more quickly, sometimes within a matter of days. With this approach, however, babies will use their signs for a shorter length of time because signs drop off quickly once babies start using more spoken words.

Finally, is it ever too late to start signing? No, not if a child is still frustrated because he or she can’t say the words needed to communicate important things. In other words, any baby or toddler who shows readiness to communicate, but cannot do so effectively with words, is a candidate for signing, and as a parent, you should not feel that it’s too early or too late to start.


Happy Signing (and don’t forget to visit us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis
and
Co-Founder, The Baby Signs® Program

Signs: Here, There, and Everywhere!

Do you remember how, once you were expecting a baby, you began to see pregnant women everywhere? Or, having finally decided to buy a particular car, you started to notice how many like it were already on the road? Where did they all come from? The answer, of course, lies in the heightened awareness that your own situation creates. It’s as though you have special radar unconsciously scanning the environment for the things that are momentarily of special importance to you.

The same thing happens to your baby when she learns a new sign or new word. With a new label at her command, she suddenly sees examples everywhere—even in places that you don’t expect. For example, for 14-monthy-old Eli, the “apple” sign made even a trip to the grocery store a special adventure, what with apples, labels on apple pies and apple juice and even pictures of apples on greeting cards. His mother, like many of us, nad never realized how pervasive apples were in the environment until Eli set about to find them all.

In a similar way, 15-month-old Trina had a love affair with her “bird” sign. Everyone expects to find birds out the window or at the park—but at church? Sure enough, embedded in the stained-glass windows over the altar were not one but two ornamental doves, peace symbols to the congregation but just plain birds to Trina. At least using signs was a quiet way to talk about them!

Like these parents, you’ll find yourself amazed at how vigilant your baby can be. She may be only a baby, but lots of mental activity is happening for her behind the scenes. And each time your baby tells you about something with a sign, she is providing you with a glimpse into all that activity, enabling you to respond appropriately and enthusiastically.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to visit us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, PhD.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

The Infant Toolbox Includes A Moral Compass

Some new research in the area of emotional development has come to my attention and has motivated me to take a detour this week away from my usual topic of signing with babies.

There’s no doubt that by the time they are preschoolers, children understand the difference between virtue and evil deeds—as is evident in their appreciation of Cinderella over the Wicked Stepmother and of Little Red Riding Hood over the Big Bad Wolf. But when does this critical distinction hold sway in the minds of little children? Believe it or not, fascinating new research indicates the seeds of distinguishing “good guys” from “bad guys” are there practically from Day 1! Here is just one example from Professor J. Kiley Hamlin’s lab at the University of British Columbia that demonstrates how we know.

Imagine you’re a 4 month old baby watching the following two events:

(1) A puppet is struggling to open the lid of a hinged box and a second puppet joins the effort, helping get the box open.
(2) The first puppet is once again struggling to open the box, but this time a third puppet jumps on top of the lid, pinning it down, thereby hindering the first puppet’s efforts.

Having seen these little events, you are given a choice of which of two puppets you want to look at and hold—the “helper” or the “hinderer.” Even babies as young as 4.5 months strongly (75%-100% of them) prefer the “Helper,” thereby indicating they took into account the goal of the lst puppet and evaluated the intentions of the 2nd and 3rd: they liked the “Helper” and spurned the “Hinderer.” (And don’t worry, the order of events was varied across children and other scenarios were tested as well.)

This is indeed good news! Why? Because it indicates that humans hit the ground running in terms of preferring helping and cooperation over negative behaviors—and that takes some of the burden off of parents. Rather than having to start from scratch getting their child to understand and prefer helping others, they need only to nurture the seeds that are already there. That’s burden enough!

Happy Signing! (and don’t forget to look for us on Facebook)

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis