{"id":41031,"date":"2016-01-08T09:18:44","date_gmt":"2016-01-08T16:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/?p=41031"},"modified":"2016-01-29T18:12:19","modified_gmt":"2016-01-30T01:12:19","slug":"new-study-suggests-trading-electronics-for-traditional-toys-and-books-to-promote-early-language-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/new-study-suggests-trading-electronics-for-traditional-toys-and-books-to-promote-early-language-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Trading electronics for traditional toys and books may boost early language development"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The lights and sounds of electronic toys may grab the attention of babies but they’re\u00a0not aiding in the child’s language\u00a0development, according to a new study<\/a> published in JAMA Pediatrics<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The study, led by Northern Arizona University professor Anna Sosa<\/strong>, suggests that books and traditional toys such as blocks or puzzles\u00a0are more effective than electronic toys at promoting high quality verbal interactions that are associated with enhanced communication and language skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is lot of variability in terms of how quickly children develop language, and one of the factors that influences that is their early language environment,\u201d said Sosa, who also serves as director for NAU\u2019s Child Speech and Language Lab<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sosa explained that one of the most important influences is the responsiveness of the parent during playtime. \u201cWe\u2019ve learned that quantity is important but also the quality of language these young children are hearing,\u201d Sosa said.<\/p>\n

For the study, researchers listened to 15-minute audio recordings of in-home interactions between parents and infants with three different toy sets: books, traditional toys and electronic toys. The selected toys focused on animal names, color names and shapes. Study participants included 26 pairs of parents and infants ages 10 to 16 months.<\/p>\n

\u201cAcross the board it was pretty consistent that when the babies were playing with electronic toys, all of the measures were lower. The parents talked less, responded less and used fewer content-specific words,\u201d Sosa explained. The number of times parents used the names of animals, colors and shapes increased when they were playing with traditional toys and more than tripled when they were reading books.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found that when we looked at the quality of the interactions and the responsiveness of the parent and the baby, there were no differences in the traditional toys versus books,\u201d Sosa said. \u201cThe books definitely did show quantity advantages over the traditional toys, but we have more and more evidence showing that it\u2019s not necessarily just the quantity but the quality, and we saw the same quality interaction with both.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sosa said parents are constantly encouraged to read to their babies but this finding suggests that reading books doesn\u2019t need to be forced. \u201cIf your child likes playing with blocks just make sure you\u2019re talking about the things on the blocks and using language in the interaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Based on the findings of this study, playing with traditional toys and reading books are recommended activities to promote early language development especially during the precious time with young children that is often limited, Sosa said.<\/p>\n

Sosa suggests\u00a0that there is no harm in giving electronic toys to children but to think of them as simply entertainment. \u201cEven if companies are marketing them as educational, they\u2019re not teaching the babies anything at this time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lights and sounds of electronic toys may grab the attention of babies but they’re\u00a0not aiding in the child’s language\u00a0development, according to a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics. The study, led by Northern Arizona University professor Anna Sosa, suggests that books and traditional toys such as blocks or puzzles\u00a0are more effective than electronic toys…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":41073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,11],"tags":[1125,1127,38,24,1128,1126],"class_list":["post-41031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors","category-research-academics","tag-anna-sosa","tag-early-language-development","tag-nau","tag-northern-arizona-university","tag-recommended-toys","tag-toys"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}