Babies talk more around human-made objects than natural ones

 Researchers have found infants are significantly more likely to use "baby talk" during interactions that involve artificial objects compared to natural ones.

Infants often communicate with protophones, which are sounds resembling squeals, growls or short word-like noises such as "da," "aga" and "ba." These are considered the foundations of speech, as they eventually evolve into full language.

Objects play an important role in this process, as the more vocalisation an object encourages, the closer a young child is to talking.

A new study, led by the University of Portsmouth, has looked at the relationship between protophones and things typically found at home to assess their importance for developing language skills.

To do this, the team observed how often children aged 4 to 18 months who live in Zambia vocalised when using toys and household items, and then compared it to how they interacted with natural objects.

They discovered the amount of protophones produced by the younger infants was significantly higher when engaging with human-made objects, compared to sticks, leaves, rocks and bird feathers.

They also found the children were more interested in household items -- such as mugs, shoes, and pens -- when given the choice between them and natural objects.

Lead author, Dr Violet Gibson from the University of Portsmouth's Department of Psychology, said: "Our findings suggest that object features have an impact on the way in which young children communicate.

"Here, we observed that natural objects were less likely to encourage infants to produce protophones, and as a consequence they may not promote language skill development as much as artificial objects.

"Preverbal infants seem to favour household items, possibly because their features are designed for specific functional purposes, or in the case of toys, they're designed to get a child's attention and spark their interest.

"This supports existing evidence that the use of complex tools in social interactions may have contributed to establishing the groundwork required for the emergence of human language."