By Stephen Beech via SWNS
New parents who spend hours talking on the phone may hamper their toddler’s language development, according to a new study.
Youngsters try to speak less when their parents are chatting away on the phone, say scientists.
They advise moms and dads to “be attuned” to their child’s needs while using their smartphones.
Previous research has suggested that phone use may have an effect on children’s speech input and language skills.
However, most of the prior work in the area examined parents and children in controlled lab experiments in public spaces and may not be representative of daily interactions.
The new study, by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, is the first to combine objective markers of speech – via audio recorders worn by infants up to the age of seven months – and maternal mobile phone use from mobile phone logs.
The findings, published in the journal Child Development, showed that maternal mobile phone use is associated with a 16% overall decrease in infants’ speech input during real-world interactions at home.
The researchers found that phone use had stronger effects on speech during some hours of the day than others, perhaps reflecting differences in how parents use their phones while caring for their infants across the day.
Study co-author Dr. Miriam Mikhelson said: “A growing number of studies are finding associations between parental phone use and children’s language development.
“We wanted to look at the way phone use may impact the quantity of speech infants hear as a potential mechanism for this connection.
“However, the language environment of an infant is complex, and the existing research only provides a snapshot of how distractions such as smartphones impact parents’ rates of speech.
“We designed our study so that we could characterize patterns of parental phone use and infants’ speech input for infants ranging from one- to seven months old during everyday interactions in the home over an extended period of time.
“Our results, therefore, provide greater ecological validity in the study of phone use behavior and language development.”
Co-author Dr. Kaya de Barbaro, also of the University of Texas, said: “We looked at the real-time changes in infants’ speech input during periods of maternal phone use.
“The data were collected from mother-infant dyads in the home using audio recordings and phone logs.
“We then compared infants’ speech input at a one-minute time scale and found a 16% decrease during phone use.”
She said that shorter instances of phone use, of one to two minutes, were associated with even greater (26%) decreases in speech input.
Dr. de Barbaro said: “We also found a stronger relation between phone use and infants’ speech input during specific times of the day.
“The variability in the association between phone use and infants’ speech input speaks to the range of ways parents engage with their phones in day-to-day life and the distinct effects different kinds of use may have on children’s language development.”
Dr. Mikhelson added: “We do not yet know the specific factors that drive the association between parental phone use and decreased speech input or the longer-term effects on language learning.
“Our results show us that phone use does not have a uniform or consistently ‘negative’ impact on children’s speech input.
“It is therefore unlikely that eliminating phone use entirely during childcare is necessary, nor is it realistic.
“Our advice to new parents is to be cognizant of the impact phones can have on their ability to be attuned to their child’s needs.
“It is critical for infants to have consistent and responsive care which can be more difficult with the alluring and consuming nature of a smartphone.
“Some parents, however, may not have the luxury of turning off or putting their phones away due to work obligations or other responsibilities they hold.
“For parents who are already anxious about the quality of their caregiving, like many new parents are, we recommend that they simply try their best to attend to their children – and to be honest with themselves about the degree to which smartphones hinder their ability to do so.
“Being aware of how easily we become consumed by our phones, despite our best intentions, is an important first step.”
Dr. de Barbaro said: “We were surprised by the overall quantity of phone use across participants.
“Our sample had an average of 4.4 hours of phone use per 12-hour period. While other studies show comparably high rates of phone use, seeing the numbers, particularly on the higher end, were still striking.
“We are curious to know what categories of phone use were most common and to what degree they differ from those of adults who are not caregivers.
“It would also be interesting to know how the participants’ phone use changed after having a child, both in terms of the total amount and categories of use.”
The research team says “continuous advances” in wearable sensor technology are enabling scientists to obtain evermore accurate measures of parent and child behavior in the home.
They said future studies could assess the impact of different kinds of phone use – such as text, phone calls or social media – in different domestic contexts like meals, playtime and breastfeeding.
