A recent study looked at the impact of high and low level background noise on toddlers’ ability to learn new words.
The results are not surprising. Toddlers learnt fewer new words in the high level background noise.
There has been a great deal of research on how important it is to have quiet time at home with your little one. This is a nice reminder to turn off that tele/radio/ipad, for periods of time throughout the day. Your little one will benefit!
Children find it hard to filter out that ‘unnecessary’ noise, like the people talking on the tele or the radio, and focus on the ‘important’ noise, like what is being said by their parent or sibling. They don’t find it as easy as adults do to focus on just one sound and ignore the other. We can help by eliminating that ‘unnecessary’ background noise especially at times when there’s lots of great language coming from their play partner!
An interesting point: the point raised at the end of the article made me think… I wonder if some background noise is good for toddlers in the long term, fine tuning their listening skills and ignoring that background noise, exactly like they will have to do at school? I look forward to reading some research findings on this in the future…..
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