Parents should use nursery rhymes and sing-song speech to help young babies learn language, according to experts.

The slow, rising and falling rhythm of nursery rhymes like Humpty Dumpty, much like the relaxed sing-song speech parents use with young infants, helps babies to identify the individual words within sentences, evidence suggests.

Scientists have now concluded rhythm is vital, after finding babies do not properly detect individual sound types like ‘ba’ and ‘ga’ until they are seven months old.

Researchers led by the University of Cambridge measured the brain activity of 50 babies, who were played recordings of 18 sung nursery rhymes when they were four, seven and 11 months old.

Previous analysis found the babies’ brains respond to rhythm at all of these ages.

Parents should use nursery rhymes and sing-song speech to help young babies learn language, according to experts (stock image) 

It’s already known that between five and seven months of gestation, a fetus can begin to hear sounds outside of the womb (file photo)

For example, a word like ‘Humpty’, where the first syllable is said with greater emphasis than the second syllable, produce specific brain activity in babies, and may help them to understand that many English words have this ‘da-dum’ structure.

Now new analysis provides more evidence that it is indeed rhythm, rather than individual word sounds, which helps young babies to learn language.

To look at whether babies learn from the phonetic building blocks of every word, like ‘ba’, ‘ma’ or ‘ga’, researchers looked at their brain response about a quarter of a second after each sound during nursery rhymes.

They ignored the brain responses previously seen in response to rhythm, to focus only on the individual sounds in words.

Stronger brain activity to word sounds was not seen in young babies and emerged only once babies are seven months old.

This activity was not very strong, even when the infants were 11 months old.

The findings suggest rhythmic speech is better than individual word sounds for learning language during the important window when babies are very young.

That means parents who recite nursery rhymes, or use sing-song speech, which both exaggerate the rising and falling tone of words like ‘Humpty Dumpty’, provide babies with more clues about how language works than if they spoke normally.

To look at whether babies learn from the phonetic building blocks of every word, like ‘ba’, ‘ma’ or ‘ga’, researchers looked at their brain response about a quarter of a second after each sound during nursery rhymes

Babies will reportedly pay more attention to baby talk than regular speech

The study’s senior author, neuroscientist Professor Usha Goswami, from the University of Cambridge, said: ‘Our research shows that the individual sounds of speech are not processed reliably until around seven months, even though most infants can recognise familiar words like ‘bottle’ by this point.

‘From then, individual speech sounds are still added in very slowly – too slowly to form the basis of language.

‘We believe that speech rhythm information is the hidden glue underpinning the development of a well-functioning language system.

‘Parents should talk and sing to their babies as much as possible or use infant-directed speech like nursery rhymes because it will make a difference to language outcome.’

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, used a special algorithm to separate out how babies’ brains respond to rhythm and phonetic word sounds separately, in EEG recordings taken from electrodes placed on their heads.

Babies appear to take a long time to learn word sounds, starting by understanding sounds produced by the upper front teeth like ‘d’ for ‘daddy’ before picking up sounds produced using air puffed through the nose, like ‘m’ for ‘mummy’.

But this detection of phonetic sounds only seems to start at seven months – beyond the four to six-month-old window when babies are known to recognise words.

Dr Marina Kalashnikova explains the importance of baby talk

Therefore rhythm must be helping before this point, the researchers suggest.

Previous studies suggest babies do detect some phonetic sounds at a younger age, but have often been based on babies turning their heads more towards a word sound in their own language, rather than those in a different or pretend language.

The authors say their research, using brain activity during nursery rhymes, suggests very young babies may not rely on word sounds when processing language from full sentences in speech – even if they can detect the individual sounds.

The findings could help to better understand what goes wrong in children who learn language with more difficulty, like those with dyslexia, when they are still babies.

Professor Giovanni Di Liberto, first author of the study, from Trinity College Dublin, said: ‘This is the first evidence we have of how brain activity relates to phonetic information changes over time in response to continuous speech.’

Scientists claim that talking to babies gives them advantages in life far beyond a larger vocabulary.

They say that chatting to babies under the age of one helps them make friends, as well as making them brighter because they are better able to discover the world around them.  

There is some debate about how important it is and also if adults should use their normal voice. 

Speaking more slowly, using a sing-song voice, and using strange words are commonplace when talking to tiny tots, but past research found that it may be detrimental to a child.  

Conflicting research claims the high-pitched voice used when talking to a baby is essential.  

‘Baby talk’ is believed by many to help with developing early speech and language skills.

These are associated with success in developing reading, writing, and interpersonal skills, both later in childhood and later in life.

Long before they can speak clearly, babies understand the general meaning of what you’re saying.