Have you noticed that babies look at our mouths when we talk? They do not always, of course, and the eyes are another important point of reference for them. But when they are learning their first sounds, their first syllables, by six months, Babies "read" the lips of those who speak to them to capture well the gestures and movements of the mouth.
For them it must be a discovery: it is no longer the rattle, it is no longer an object that makes noise, but from that curious organ of the face of mom and dad many different sounds come out, and I can do something similar too! The baby, little by little, learns to speak.
Obviously, babies will not learn to say "sternocleidomastoid" by looking at our mouth, but we do help them with their first syllables by repeating them: pa, ma, be... And for this there is no better than to talk to them as babies.
New research confirms that Babies do not learn to speak just by listening to sounds, they also read lips, in that magical stage in which the babble of the baby gradually changes from an inconsistent gibberish to syllables, and then to the first "mom" or "dad".
After six months, babies begin to change the absorbed look of early childhood to study mouths when people speak to them. It is a complex process that has been analyzed by psychologists at Florida Atlantic University.
Apparently, children do not take long to know the movements that match the basic sounds. It is around twelve months when babies begin to look more in the eye again, unless they hear unknown sounds of a foreign language. If so, use the "lip reading technique" a little more.
As we see, babies are perfectly able to focus their attention on what is important at each stage of their development. The new research has been published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
And it is more evidence that spending more time with babies is very important for their development, also for language development. It seems clear that babies won't be able to "study" gestures or read lips to cartoon characters or toys ...
