From the time I was a child I can remember my mother sprinkling her communications to me with words that you wouldn’t expect a child to understand, but when she labeled me dilatory or exasperating, I understood very well what she meant.

I have been told one or two times that I shouldn’t speak in adult language to children because they don’t understand. But how do children learn any word, indeed, how do they learn language? By hearing it spoken. When I speak in Spanish to my 7-year-old son, people ask in amazement “Does he speak Spanish”? I usually answer, “No, not yet”.

Now some research done by a Johns Hopkins undergraduate shows that toddlers learn words faster if they learn by inference rather than instruction. Letting children puzzle out the meaning of a word for themselves leads to longer lasting knowledge than teaching by instruction only.

Meredith Brinster worked with children 36 to 42 months. By introducing objects and names for them in two ways, she measured how quickly children learned new words and which method helped them remember what they had learned.

Using a familiar object, say a ball and a second, unfamiliar object such as a tool, Brinster introduced a nonsense word like “blicket” and ask children to point out the object that went with the word. Because the ball was familiar and the children knew the name for that object, they were able to infer that the unfamiliar object was the “blicket”.

A second group of children was shown an object and told that it was a “blicket” using a direct instructional form of teaching.

Later when children were asked to point out the “blicket” it was clear that those children who had used reason to determine which object was the “blicket” remembered the information better and longer than those who had simply been taught the name of the object.

Undergrad: Kids Learn Words Best by Working out Meaning Study by New Jersey senior shows inference is best strategy for toddlers