Michael Edelman <mje at mich.com> wrote:
> The more stimulation you can provide to a child,
> the better, and the earlier you provide it, the better. One of the
> strongest early-childhood correlates to later academic success is whether
> the child was read to. Surprise.
Language is learned, not inherent. Children who do not hear it spoken do
not acquire it, and children learn the language they actually are exposed to,
even if they were originally born red, black, white or yellow.
Even before children can understand the words, they do appreciate the
prosody of talk, and this serves to program their social abilities
(read: limbic system, prefrontal lobe, etc.).
So no wonder that reading to children, talking to them, singing to them
helps to develop their neural and mental abilities.
The actual studies (cannot give you references, as I did not give that
lecture) I have heard of, showing that reading to the child
correlates with academic success were performed on primary level
shoolchildren, some of which had real difficulties in learning to read
and write. Such children had often been intellectually neglected by
their parents (who may not have had much academic success either, and
probably watched football more than talked to the children.
Dag Stenberg
