"Your dog may be smarter than your toddler" screams the headline in CNN. Can it be true? What kinds of intelligence do dogs display? And what does it have to do with child language development?
Well, there are two claims made in the article. One finding is that dogs understand about 180 words, signs, signals and gestures. How does this compare to young children? Toddlers between 18 and 24 months on average can produce about 180 different words (note that these are averages, children are very idiosyncratic at this age and so their vocabulary size can vary a lot). We would expect children at this age to use at least 50 different words (so, you can see how much variation there is). But, children may UNDERSTAND many MANY more words than they use. By this same age (18 months), they should understand about 300 or more words. By age two they understand even more. So, it looks like here toddlers know MORE words than dogs.
The other thing I found interesting in this article is that dogs seem to be able to recognize number of items. The way this experiment was done is very clever. This is because dogs can't tell you how many they see (neither can very young children). But, they can tell you if the number of treats they expected in their bowl is not what they got. How? Well, the person doing the experiment dropped treats into a bowl for the dog one at a time. But, they either took out or added treats while the dog was not looking. When the number of items matched the number of items the dog saw put into the bowl they went straight to eating it. When the number expected did not match the actual count, the dog paused for a moment. This pause time difference was a way that experimenters were able to infer that the dogs had noticed the change in number.
Similar experiments have been done with babies. In one experiment, researchers showed babies arrays of dots. Babies as young as 6 MONTHS could tell the difference between 2 and 3 dots. As in the dog experiment, babies couldn't just tell the examiner how many they saw, but they experimenters could tell by how long they babies looked at the arrays that they could tell there was a difference. At this age however they did not notice the difference between 4 and 6 dots-- they looked at those arrays the same amount of time. Again this is an age much younger than 2 or so.
So, all in all, dogs do have some surprising abilities. But babies language and math abilities are better. Enjoy!
Showing posts with label vocabulary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vocabulary. Show all posts
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
TV Decreases Children's Language Use
I think in a lot of ways that it makes sense. If young children are watching TV then they're not interacting with adults. Interaction is the way children learn how to communicate, what words to use, and the back and forth of turn-taking. Turn-taking provides a critical foundation for language learning.
A recent study in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine was reported in the Huntsville Natural Parenting Examiner today. I went and hunted down the original study. I was interested in what the practical effects were and what they did exactly.
The researchers used a system called LENA. This system uses a digital processor to record and count the language (in words) children produce and what they hear throughout the day. For research this is a powerful way to track children's linguistic exposure and to document their development. The researchers used LENA for this purpose. They examined how many words children heard spoken by adults, how much television they heard, and how many words they used.
They found that for every hour children listened to television (or that television was on in the presence of the child), they heard between 500-1000 fewer words. They were about 1/4 of a standard deviation lower in their vocalizations and turn taking for every hour of television they heard. Children who were exposed to television used correspondingly fewer turns for every hour of hearing TV.
What does this mean? From a practical perspective, more TV means less interaction. Less interaction seems to lead to less language learning. Of course there are times when parents simply need children to pay attention to something else. I remember those early months when even taking a shower uninterrupted seemed like a big accomplishment. We do need strategies for getting through the day and television could be one of those tools. But, especially for young children, it should not be the only one or even the primary one. I still agree that limiting TV exposure for children-- especially those under two (but even older kids) will lead to more productive communication.
A recent study in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine was reported in the Huntsville Natural Parenting Examiner today. I went and hunted down the original study. I was interested in what the practical effects were and what they did exactly.
The researchers used a system called LENA. This system uses a digital processor to record and count the language (in words) children produce and what they hear throughout the day. For research this is a powerful way to track children's linguistic exposure and to document their development. The researchers used LENA for this purpose. They examined how many words children heard spoken by adults, how much television they heard, and how many words they used.
They found that for every hour children listened to television (or that television was on in the presence of the child), they heard between 500-1000 fewer words. They were about 1/4 of a standard deviation lower in their vocalizations and turn taking for every hour of television they heard. Children who were exposed to television used correspondingly fewer turns for every hour of hearing TV.
What does this mean? From a practical perspective, more TV means less interaction. Less interaction seems to lead to less language learning. Of course there are times when parents simply need children to pay attention to something else. I remember those early months when even taking a shower uninterrupted seemed like a big accomplishment. We do need strategies for getting through the day and television could be one of those tools. But, especially for young children, it should not be the only one or even the primary one. I still agree that limiting TV exposure for children-- especially those under two (but even older kids) will lead to more productive communication.
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