A new study challenges the traditional view that babies learn to speak through hearing sounds alone. Learning to speak is a complex process. It’s not just an auditory process; it involves visual and auditory information. Lip-reading, along with hearing the sounds the mouth makes, helps babies learn to talk, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers from Florida Atlantic University discovered that beginning at 6 months old, babies move their gazes from your eyes to your mouth when you talk. This is roughly the same time of development when babies’ babbles become repetitive single syllables ““ like “ma-ma” or “da-da.”
To imitate you and the words you make, your baby looks at your lips to see what shape they make when you say a particular word.