Young Children Thrive on 30,000 W...( New study confirms: talk...),Health

New study confirms: talk is key to school success

ORANGE, Calif., Sept. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- For children between birth and age 3, the most powerful number is 30,000 -- the number of words they need to hear every day from their parents and caregivers, to ensure optimal language development and academic success, according to the Power of Talk research study.

Infoture, a Colorado-based company with scientific advisory board members in California, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Tennessee and Texas, is receiving international recognition for its Power of Talk study. The study confirms and expands on the well-known benchmark study by Drs. Betty Hart and Todd Risley that showed children who hear at least 30,000 words a day will thrive regardless of race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status. That's the same number heard in 18 and a half readings of Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat."

"I tell parents the best way to increase the speech and language skills of young children is engaging in lots of talk and lots of reading right from the start," says Judy Montgomery, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, professor of special education and literacy at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and an Infoture scientific advisory board member. "I remind parents to speak often, use lots of expression and describe what's around them. It's not educational toys, TV or videos that help a child develop language; it's talk from an engaged caregiver."

Conducted by a team of scientists, including language experts and speech technology engineers, the Power of Talk study (http://www.lenababy.com/Research.aspx) examines the relationship between talk and child language development. Some key findings include:

-- Parents estimated they talked more with their children than they

actually did.

-- Parents of advanced children in the 90th to 99th percentile on language

assessments spoke substantiall
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