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Script Below:

Hello and welcome back, curious parents!   

This is Part 2 of our look at early words. Part 1 was all about the “when” of it all – the big communication milestones that lead kids from babbling to real actual words.   

Today in the HELLO Lab, we dive into the “how” – as in, how the heck babies actually learn words and connect meaning to the world around them. Let’s take a brief “peek under the hood” of language learning.  

Before a baby can say their first word (and mean what they say), they need to have at least a vague idea of what a word is used for in the first place: communication. It sounds obvious to us – what else would we use words for? But for those of us who are new here, it takes time to get the hint!   

Once the lightbulb comes on, babies get better at tuning into patterns – of speech sounds, of hand movements – and connecting them to important things through repetition in everyday routines (Axelsson & Horst, 2014*; Horst, 2013; Horst, 2018*).  

Of course, word learning isn’t just about imitating sounds or memorizing labels for things. It’s about understanding that words represent the world around us, they mean something. 

The process of linking a word to a part of the world is called “mapping”. And there’s pretty strong evidence that this process works better for babies when there is social reinforcement too (Baldwin, Markman, Bill, Desjardins, Irwin, & Tidball, 1996*; Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 2006*). Babies don’t just learn words for fun, they are socially motivated to use them with others (Baldwin, Markman, Bill, Desjardins, Irwin, & Tidball, 1996*; Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 2006*). However, like much of language learning, there is still a lot to uncover about how this all works. So as we can see, before babies can talk, they first need things to talk about – and they get that by interacting with the world.    

Let’s break down the mapping process a bit more. Before they can learn what “ball” means, kids have to:  

See and play with a “ball” long enough to form an idea of what it is.   

They also have to hear or see the word ‘ball’ enough times to remember the ‘b’ ‘a’ ‘l’ sequence of sounds or visual signs as a word.   

Then, they somehow figure out that this string of sounds and/or visual signs represents the thing we call a “ball.”  

For now, let’s examine how babies learn to pull individual words from a string of sounds or visual signs. As we’ll see… It’s a lot harder than it seems.  

This might be a surprising fact: Babies hear or see most words as parts of sentences rather than by themselves (Johnson, 2015; Johnson, Seidl & Tyler, 2014; Swingley, 2005*; Weijer, 1998).   

This actually makes learning words much trickier than it seems. Listen to a short audio clip of a language you (likely) don’t know. How many individual words did you hear? Do you know where one word ends and the other begins? If you use sign language, you run into the same problem when you’re telling a story and all the signs just blend together.    

Just imagine being a baby and having to figure it out! Incredibly, they do this before they understand that there are even these individual things called “words” in the first place (Johnson, 2015).  

Well, it gets even harder because different words can sound very similar and the same words can sound quite different, depending on the person saying it (Houston, 2005*; Johnson, 2015; Van Heugten & Johnson, 2014.pdf). The same goes for visual-based languages too.   

Over time, babies start to figure out where one word ends and another begins in fluent speech and how to recognize words across different talkers (Houston, 2005*; Houston & Jusczyk, 2000; Johnson, 2015; Johnson, Seidl, & Tyler 2014).  

How they do that exactly is a topic of ongoing research.  

Once babies can pick out individual words, they still run into this problem of understanding what those words mean. Some of this involves some “trial and error” – kiddos don’t always get it right on the first try (Horst, 2018*). And this is good for learning. Why?  

Imagine if the first time your baby heard “dog,” he or she happened to be playing with their stuffed, toy “banana”? They would logically learn that ‘dog’ meant a yellow edible treat, with a tough and not-so-tasty peel, or at least would mean their adorable pushy toy in front of them.  In this scenario, they’d have to somehow unlearn that “dog” does NOT mean “banana” (and vice versa) [Horst, 2018*].   

Instead, it seems that babies first gradually notice that the unique sequence of sounds or visual signs that make up the target word “dog” tends to appear when the family pooch is around, or even a toy dog, or picture of one (Roembke, Simonetti, Koch, & Philipp, 2023; Smith & Yu, 2008; Swingley, 2009). You get the point.   

Now let’s say mama and baby are both interacting with the family dog and both know that each other’s attention is on the dog. Hearing the word “dog” during these moments of shared focus, known as “joint attention”, helps a lot with word learning (Farrant & Zubrick, 2011; Yu & Smith, 2012).  

Quick! What do you get when you put these 3 elements together – learning concepts, recognizing strings of sounds as words, and linking concepts with those words? If you said, “word learning” you’d be correct. This happens faster than you might think. In fact, by 6-9 months, it’s estimated that babies already know the names of many common objects, like toys (Bergelson & Swingley, 2012)!   

Repetition and interaction are both key points to keep in mind. The more a kid experiences the word “ball” paired with their favorite, super fun bouncy toy, they start to connect the dots and become even more aware of the language around them (Axelsson & Horst, 2014*; Johnson, 2015; Mason, Goldstein, Schwade, 2019*).   

But it’s not all about talking to your baby as much as possible. Instead, it’s about providing input through enriching interactions.   

So, before your baby says their first word, how can you help? Don’t overthink it. Talk to them! Talk about and describe what you are doing in your day, read together (yes, even before they understand), encourage them to talk by responding positively to their attempts at speech sounds, and play!   

Everyday conversations and games – especially social ones – are among the best tools to support language growth (Baldwin, Markman, Bill, Desjardins, Irwin, & Tidball, 1996*; Farrant & Zubrick, 2011).    

To expect a kiddo to talk and actually use words, we need to provide plenty of words for them to play and experiment with first! It’s a good thing there’s plenty of language all around us.  

So talk, sing, play, and respond to your baby whenever they try to communicate with you, whatever that means for them. Doing this helps them not only learn words, but (eventually) be full-blown language users.  

Well, that’s a wrap on our 2-part word learning journey. You’ll never hear (or see) words the same way again.   

As always, thanks for watching! And special thanks to the HELLO Lab participants who let us feature them on today’s episode. Until next time.  

Don’t just take our word for it. Get it because word … see what I mean? Sorry. Check out our evidence library on our website to learn all about the research that helped us make this episode. Link in description. If you like today’s episode, consider sharing with a new parent who might be on the edge of their seat waiting for that special first word moment. Don’t forget to like and subscribe!   

*Please contact us at thehellolab@gmail.com if you have difficulty accessing any articles.