Just how much influence do you have on your child's language learning?
Dr Michelle Peter helps one mum find out, using a device that tracks the number of words her 21-month-old son hears and says over the course of a day.
Narrator:
So if more language is better, Michelle wants to know if you can influence the speed at which babies increase their word count by simply saying more words to them.
She's recruited a family in the Wirral to help her find out.
Elizabeth:
Look at that big tongue!
Narrator:
Michelle has given Percy an innovative word tracking device. It has an algorithm to log every word he hears and every word he says over the course of a day.
Elizabeth:
Mummy Pig is busy, she has lots of important work to do.
Michelle:
So this time, we're setting you a challenge and actually what we'd really like you to do is up your speech to Percy. We'd like you to really maximise on every opportunity that you can to engage in verbal interaction with him, so we want you to really talk as much as you can to Percy. We want to see if you respond back, don't we? Thank you. Ooh!
Elizabeth:
What can you see over there?
Narrator:
Getting out and about is an obvious way to stimulate conversation.
Elizabeth:
Hello doggies. What do the doggies do? Woof, woof. Woof, woof, woof. Can you do some running?
Percy:
No.
Elizabeth:
No, you don't want to run?
Percy:
I'm cold.
Elizabeth:
Are you cold?
What colour are the clouds?
Percy:
Blue.
Elizabeth:
Blue?
Are they spiky? Did you get wet?
Thank you.
This way.
Narrator:
After scrutinising the data, Michelle is back with the results.
Michelle:
Hi Elizabeth!
Elizabeth:
Come on in.
Michelle:
Thanks.
Elizabeth:
Hi Michelle.
Michelle:
Hi Percy!
You increased your language and your talking to Percy from 13,000 words to just over 13,700. So that's about a five percent increase. And what's really nice to see here is that we wanted to know 'what would Percy do">