Translator: Chloe Choo Reviewer: Helen Chang Thank you very much! There are major predictors of health and wealth It can be determined at the age of three. And that predictor is language. Language is the most meaningful essence of human beings. Animals can communicate with sound or body language, I can assure you, My cat can wake me up at five in the morning, Because it is hungry.
But human use of language Far more skilled and fluent than animals. I can tell you the language in the full version of the Oxford English Dictionary, There are 600,000 different words that Americans and British people can understand. Many people speak more than one language.
So human capabilities are great, You have never really seen a chimpanzee or rhino reading, But humans generally read books, And we can understand language. Babies come to this world, Seems to have been set precisely Learn all the different new words and understand the essence of language. It is language that gives us humanity, And frankly, it is the language that gives us survivability.
During a period of rapid growth, brain capacity will increase significantly by at least one third, Occurs in the last stage of pregnancy, Just before the baby is born. And I can tell you that babies are born to learn different languages. I can tell you, Because the important thing about babies is not just language ability, It is their way of learning the language that is related to the caregiver.
This means a unique experience between mother and baby. I can tell you from the perspective of my mother, I have experienced this in my life. I am a gynecologist; I have delivered many, many babies, But giving birth to someone else’s baby, It’s completely different from my own pregnancy experience.
Now, when I was pregnant, I was already a doctor. I have wanted to be a doctor since I was eight years old. I love this career. I am an excellent surgeon. At the time, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted a child. Later, I was pregnant Is willing to become pregnant– Then, suddenly, I can strongly sense my unborn daughter.
Suddenly, this woman who is curious about the outside world Focus only on my pregnant belly. I’m not very interested in things that are more than ten feet away from me. This instinct is more evident in babies.
What you are watching now is the development of language, Because language is the interaction between caregiver and baby. The experiment at the Harvard Child Development Center It’s about the importance of instinct. This experiment is called the “Fashy Face Experiment”.
In the experiment, The mother was instructed to turn her back to the child, Turned back again and looked at the child expressionlessly. See what happened to this baby. The first thing you will see is that she will try to participate. This is to elicit a reaction from the mother.
Little finger, and she muttered, “Ah, ah, ah”, “Mom, mom, mom”, then try to reach out and touch you. This is very important, this is instinct. Then, suddenly, she began to feel frustrated, No matter what you do, it won’t attract people’s attention, and she starts to scream, “Ah!” She tried to comfort herself.
Then she looked away and tried to break away from interaction, This was her last attempt to attract the attention of her mother. Then she began to cry in despair. This is a natural instinct. This “light face experiment” experiment Make it clear that all this is a natural instinct.
So, where is the importance? What is the conclusion of this biological experiment? Why do mothers care about their children, Or is it so important for the child to get the mother’s attention? The long-term influence of all these primitive things, I think that some outstanding research work in Hart and Risley has been completed.
They are experimenters who once participated in the “anti-poverty plan”. They fight poverty, they said: “Did you know that there is a problem here, Because we didn’t really see it, Through the intervention of these early childhood education, Although they look good, although with certain results, We still don’t see what we want to see. “
So, they said: “Can we look at the earlier ones? Did anything happen before these babies went to kindergarten? Or before they go to first grade, Did anything very important happen? ” Their research work made an extremely close and in-depth observation of family life.
They walked into 42 families, These families were observed very seriously. They visit these families for an hour every month, every month, Since the child was seven months old, It did not end until the end of the third year. They found out, Like the title of my speech, This is not what they expected.
First of all, These children are well taken care of. So this is not a problem of children’s change, The differences between children have nothing to do with unmet physical needs. Secondly, it has nothing to do with race, It has nothing to do with gender. The key is: It also has nothing to do with money.
It is not determined by the number of toys that parents can afford. It is not determined by the community in which they live. It is not determined by the size of the house they live in. It is determined by the interaction between parents and children.
The interaction they saw after three years of observation was, More than 30 million words, Those families classified as professional families, Professional family father and mother Compared with those poor families, they said more than 30 million words to their children. The reality is that in those poor families, Those parents only said about 600 words per hour to their children. In professional families, there are more than two thousand words per hour.
Because in a professional family, parents will continue to talk to their children. “Oh, your diaper should be changed.” “Oh dear, I will handle this well.” “Oh, look at your little toes. They are amazing!” “Oh, look at your little belly button. That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.” “You are my beloved child.” More than 30 million words. This is important because the nerves of the brain develop, The actual development of the brain depends on speech.
Whenever a word is spoken, The brain fires a neuron, It stimulates neurons. When repeating the word, The same neural pathway will be stimulated again, It will become stronger and stronger, Then branch out, this is how learning ability is produced. And if these words are not used repeatedly, The opposite will happen. These neurons will shrink and then die, Finally disappeared. The scientific term is called “pruning”. But exactly what it means is that it reduces the ability to learn.
Now, I need to tell you another thing, it doesn’t just hear these words. Because putting the baby in front of the TV, It will be like the “Dilute Face Experiment”, They cannot learn. They cannot learn because the main thing is interaction. Children with hearing impairments can also learn languages.
“Thank you” (than sign language) is a language in sign language, It is a meaningful symbol. This is language. So this is not a question of hearing, The most important thing is interaction. This is extremely important. This is a chart Shows the impact of 30 million words on these children.
At the end of the third year, Babies born to families supported by social welfare only know 500 words, Children in professional families know more than a thousand words. It will have an important impact. This whole process is language nutrition. this means Language is of absolute importance for brain development.
Language is definitely the foundation of human learning. If you think about it, What exactly is language nutrition, Is the development of neurons, Brain development, Biology is absolutely dependent on language, This is directly related to reading ability, This has a direct relationship with whether you can graduate from high school, This is directly related to the study of university education.
Or related to high school education. The importance of learning to read, The importance of language nutrition, According to observations, it is profound and far-reaching. This is not only short-term, It is long-term. They will visit these children five years later, They found that the gap between these children has increased. The gap has changed from five hundred words to one thousand words, It also becomes the ability to identify the ability to pass the third-grade standardized test.
Why is this benchmark so important? The third grade is very important in the process of human learning, Because in the third grade, you have to learn to read. After the third grade, You have to learn by reading. If you cannot pass the corresponding reading level in the third grade, You can’t read the text, In the end you will not keep up. You may never catch up.
For children who do not meet the corresponding reading level in the third grade, They have a fourfold chance of failing to graduate from high school. Remember this language nutrition model? If they have poor reading skills, They cannot graduate from high school, And directly affect the question of whether they can succeed in society in the future.
If your reading ability is really backward, Then you are six times more likely to fail high school graduation. Now, the problem in Georgia is, 70% of Georgian children in third grade do not have the appropriate reading skills. Seventy percent. This will have a profound impact on Georgia, It will also have a profound impact on the people involved.
There is a leaderboard called the “US National Health Ranking.” In those health rankings, Two groups kept me awake at night. As an official of Qiaozhou Health Department, there are two groups that worry me. One group is infant mortality and premature birth, and all this kind of problems. In this regard, we have made some progress; We will talk about it another day. The other group is at the bottom and belongs to the last ten nationwide, It is related to the literacy ability of the third grade.
We have a large number of poor children, There are a large number of students who cannot graduate from high school, The gap between rich and poor is also great, Lack of health insurance, Low employment, unemployment. All of this is related to our lack of reading ability in the third grade.
In addition, as an official of Qiaozhou Health Department, I can tell you, That is unacceptable. That is incredible, Especially when I know that it’s not because of a community problem, Not an income issue, Not a genetic problem, But because of contact with language, Early language contact.
Therefore, we participate in a public-private partnership project called “Baby, talk to me.” This is to solve the problem we face in Georgia. This is a public-private partnership. It involves joint recruitment, It involves the Anne Casey Foundation, It involves the Ministry of Public Health, It involves the Department of Early Childhood Care and Learning.
But all are the same; All this is for paradigm shift. For example, the Marcus Foundation, one of our partners, They participate in the development of educational tools for healthcare institutions, Teach nurses, hospitals and doctors how to tell patients, Regarding the importance of early education, And how to guide patients to do this.
In terms of public health, we will directly contact the mothers, Because in public health, we have an interesting small project called WIC. WIC is the American Social Welfare-Special Nutritional Supplement Program for Women, Children and Infants WIC is different from general food stamp programs.
At WIC, you don’t just get a small plastic card, Then go to the grocery store to buy anything you need. At WIC, you must meet with us, See a dietitian every three months, You can only use your WIC card to purchase certain foods. We think this is a unique opportunity to get nutritious food, This is very important for citizens of our state, We will also talk to them about language nutrition. WIC has many participants, Between 50% and 60% of babies in Georgia are eligible to participate in WIC. 50% to 60%.
And those low-risk mothers. WIC is everywhere, Georgia has 159 counties, We have more than 159 WIC offices in Georgia. Each of our WIC offices, Everywhere in Georgia has the ability to reach out to these people. There is no WIC office in Georgia. We hired the Marcus Foundation to make some videos, These videos will be played in the WIC clinic. They will tell these young mothers, These young and needy mothers, these poor mothers, We are going back to the original research on the importance of food nutrition.
They will tell these mothers what to do, Because it is not direct, “Oh, you will be fine talking to your children.” There are some details you need to understand, These videos are designed to achieve this. It will tell them, The baby can recognize his mother’s voice as soon as he is born, So when your child is still in the womb, you can start talking to them.
Therefore, this plan aims to let these mothers understand these things. What we have done so far is, We want to know how to do it most effectively. I believe it will work, But what we want to know is, is it really so effective? Therefore, we evaluated the average number of words recognized by children in the WIC clinic.
We will start playing these videos, We will combine it with some strengthening measures- Remember the aforementioned visits to pregnant women and children every three months? We will use nutrition to strengthen their explanation, “Food nutrition is very important, But language nutrition may be more important for children. ” When the mother left the WIC clinic, She will bring a book home. I really think This will change the social dynamics in Georgia.
I know all this is related to language. Language development is the most important concept. I know that the Budget Office of the House of Representatives recently did a study, They read the evaluation report of the “Poverty Alleviation Plan”, The project began in the 1960s, According to our budget office, We spent 5 trillion dollars on this.
And this is what has changed in terms of poverty rates. In 1965, when the anti-poverty program began, The poverty rate is 17.3%. By 2012, after investing US$5 trillion, It fell to 15%. That hasn’t made much progress.
What I want to present is, I think the problem is that we didn’t find the answer to the question as early as possible, And we haven’t– We also did not cover the language. We must cover language. Language is the foundation for solving poverty. The life expectancy in the time of Jesus was 20 to 30 years.
After a thousand years, human life expectancy is still 20 to 30 years. Today, you guys sitting there, Your life expectancy is 80 years or more. You survived when you were born, When you learned to drive when you were a teenager, you survived, And you have a high chance of living above 80. Changes in life expectancy, Not because of vascular bypass surgery or CAT scan.
Both vascular bypass surgery and CAT scan are great, May help extend life for a year or two. But those transformations, It comes from a more basic, elementary, original public health plan. The change in life expectancy comes from clean water, Effective drainage system, vaccination, There is also the development of antibiotics.
I can tell you that in 1900, The things that killed us, The three killers of humanity in 1900, It is pneumonia, tuberculosis and diarrhea. I can also tell you, What I just mentioned Clean water, drainage system, vaccination, antibiotics- Those things have contributed to changes in life expectancy.
I can also tell you that I believe we are in On the edge of the next transformation of public health. That transformation and transformation, I sincerely believe that Is a profound understanding of the importance of language development, And the persistence we have Popular, effective and early language development.
As an official of the Georgia Department of Health, the message I want to convey today is very simple, But I think this is very important. The message I want to send is: Talk to your child. Thank you. (applause)
