Do talking dolls really help develop speech skills in children?

A new study in the Journal of the Pediatrics American Medical Association (JAMA) says: you shouldn't always believe the labels that refer to the packaging box, where it says that a toy promotes language development.

Many parents buy toys, especially those that speak two languages, to encourage language development skills in babies and children. While the study claims that communication and continuous interaction with the child affects his language ability (reading and academic success).

According to researchers, games that are labeled as educational are, unfortunately, often misleading.

There is a boom in electronic games claiming to help children improve their language skills (talking faster), but researchers say their "educational" value is not always fair.

Families participating in the Northern Arizona University study were given books, traditional, non-electronic toys (notepads, building blocks, puzzles, etc.), and electronic games, and asked to play with them on three separate days. .

The researchers monitored parent-infant communication during breaks after each game, observed how much parents talked to their babies, the number of utterances to explain the game to them, their verbal responses to the child's noises, and the specific words used by the child's responses. to the parents.

The researchers chose talking toys that were selected to promote language development skills for children between the ages of 10 and 16 months. But as it turned out, they found that nothing compared to vocal interaction during breaks between games than a parent's voice.

Although the research sample was small in number, about 26 parents, (almost all of whom were educated), the researchers said that the data showed that electronic toys are not sufficiently capable of communication and interaction to enable babies to expressing through language.

Just as learning is a social activity that requires interaction, mere toys cannot do this job alone.

Heather Kirkorian, a child development researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, along with the study's lead researcher, Professor Anna Sosa of Northern Arizona University, agree that the best thing parents can do is facilitate the development of language skills with their children by talking and interacting with them in order to promote the child's language skills. /Telegraph/