Back And Forth Conversation With Children Important For Children’s Brain Development

Article Summary:

A new study from MIT examined children between four to six years of age and used LENA technology to quantify how many conversational turns they experienced. Then, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the team examined how the children’s brains responded to language in different ways. The researchers found that the number of conversational turns was strongly correlated with significant differences in the language skill and brain physiology of the children in the study. This correlation held constant even when other variables, such as education level or parental income, were taken into account.