Babies Love to Hear Their Own Babble: Study

A baby's babbling is something cute to hear. For parents, it may even be music to their ears. For the baby him/herself, a babble is something that may help him/her develop.

A recent study conducted by an assistant professor from the University of Missouri has found that when babies hear their own babble, they would want to make more of them.

The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, involved studying the babbling behavior of 43 babies. Of these babies, 27 could hear, while 16 could not, and were given cochlear implants. These implants were small electronic devices embedded into the bone behind the ear. These replaced some of the functions of the damaged ear.

Prior to and after being implanted with the hearing devices, their babbling behavior was recorded. It was found that babies with profound hearing loss were unlikely, even rarely, to produce repetitive sounds such as 'da-da,' while babies who had normal hearing kept on producing them.

However, after the devices were implanted, the number of babies who produced repetitive vocalizations increased, and the number of repetitive vocalizations increased, and also, the number of syllables actually repeated in one string, such as 'ba-ba-ba-ba-ba,' increased as well.

"The research tells us that infants are motivated by hearing the sounds they produce, so these sounds are functional in some way," said study author Mary Fagan, an assistant professor of communication science and disorders in the MU School of Health Professions, in a press release.

"Research conducted by others supports the idea that babies form mental representations of their own babbles, such as these strings of syllables, which may be the reason that infants tend to use the sounds that they have babbled in their first words rather than the sounds that are most common in the speech that adults use with them," Fagan explained.

Knowing that hearing critically affects the development of a baby's speech development, Fagan said that parents of kids with profound hearing loss should be well-informed about hearing implants.

"Many parents elect to have their children with profound hearing loss receive cochlear implants, and that's a decision parents alone can make," Fagan said. "Whatever decision the parents make, the data strongly show that if parents are going to choose a cochlear implant, the sooner the better.”

“Studies like mine show how rapidly babies with hearing loss respond to cochlear implants, often minimizing the impact on their speech, language and vocabulary development," Fagan added.