Rachel Albert, a B.A.B.Y. lab Ph.D now at Lebanon Valley College, recently authored an article in Scientific American on our recent findings from a study on parental responses to infant babbling.  In the study, we asked mothers to react to audio and video clips of unfamiliar infants engaged in babbling.  We found that infants who babbled in more mature ways and who directed their sounds at objects received more informative speech from mothers.  Thus babbling can facilitate learning by eliciting information from parents.

Congratulations to Rachel on her engaging and successful foray into the popular press!