Language delivered in the context of an adult-child interaction characterised by responsiveness and positive regard helps to scaffold children’s learning and encourage verbal behaviours as they develop.

Allowing infants to communicate using baby-talk or other means helps children listen and communicate and grasp the language quickly. A longitudinal study on 48 infants aged nine to twenty-seven months in Scotland found that the more baby-talk words that infants are exposed to and allowed to use, the quicker they grasp language. Assessments of nine-month-old children suggest that those who hear words such as “bunny” or “choo-choo” frequently are faster at picking up new words between nine and twenty-one months.