How Babies Talk Audiobook By Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Golinkoff cover art

How Babies Talk

The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life

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How Babies Talk

By: Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Golinkoff
Narrated by: Kristin Dzuiba
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About this listen

Two developmental psychologists/language experts offer parents a powerfully insightful guide to how infants - even while in the womb - begin to learn language.

©1999 Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Child Psychology Infants & Toddlers Relationships Infant Baby First Year Baby Language
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Editorial reviews

In the ever-deepening field of developmental psychology, the ability to learn language - so inherent in humans - still fascinates from a scientific perspective. From more recent realizations, like that fetuses begin to grasp the most rudimentary parts of language while still in the womb, to more established knowledge concerning how a mother tongue is recognized by a young mind, Dr. Kathy Hirsch-Pasek and Dr. Roberta Golinkiff seek to expose you to the beauty of language, from the significance of babbling, to associations between symbols and sounds. Your guide through these intriguing discoveries is performer Kristin Dzuiba who brilliantly narrates this scientific study with excellent sense accessibility.

Critic reviews

"This is a great book...an important addition to any parent's library" (T. Berry Brazelton)

What listeners say about How Babies Talk

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Very informative

I enjoyed this book, I felt it was very informative and interesting. If you are like me and have an infant at home, I think you’ll enjoy this book because it will help you help your child! It wasn’t my favorite narration, but definitely not the worst either. Don’t understand why some of the reviews are so low. I think it’s worth listening to, and it was included with our membership, which makes it even better! Lol

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful book.

This is a comprehensive book about language development in children from womb until 3 years. It contains many scientific guides for parents on how to stimulate children to develop language. A must read for every parent.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

New Dad Good Info

This audiobook contained a lot of really good information. Many chapters contained lots of scientific information which I found useful and gave the book more credibility. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about how babies talk and how they progress from being born through multiple ages. If I had to give one negative critique, I would say the book should have contained more examples. The author was academic at times, therefore, more examples would've been beneficial.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Foremost child development experts discuss language

I adore Hirsh-Pasak and Golinkoff. They make it their mission to share the latest research—including from their own acclaimed baby labs—with parents. This book focuses on language acquisition, which is rather “zoomed-in” so it wasn’t as fun as some of their other books, but it’s genuinely interesting, especially the toddler section on humor, storytelling, and social awareness.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

long

Book : "don't worry your kid will talk"
me: "that's what I needed to hear"

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Informative and science based

I loved this book and found it so interesting! It's not the easiest read but if you're interested in learning more deeply about child and speech development, you will learn so much!

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Technical, yet accessible.

This was a required text for my First Language Acquisition class, and it was great to have it in audio format so I could "study" during my commute to school. We had other assigned reading material which was much more technical, so this book was nice to go through, as well, because everything is explained so clearly. It was written for parents, but it's still definitely based on the linguistic studies fine on this field, some by this book's authors themselves. I think this should be required reading for all parents. If I have kids, I'll be coming back to it myself.

I thought the narrator did a good job, but the place felt ridiculously slow. It sounded a lot more normal at 1.25x the speed, and I listened primarily at 1.5x to save time (which sounded just fine). I think I've listened to this book three times, if you add up the repetitions I've racked up while preparing for quizzes.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Seems to be based on poor research

I actually couldn't bare to finish this book. Honestly the research method seems spotty at best at some points and down right dangerous to babies at others. ANY mother knows what the cries her HER baby mean, not a random baby that THE RESEARCHER chooses and then decides the cry means hungry or tired or in pain. Also, everything we know indicates that less screen time is better then more. Many of the studies indicate babies under 5 months spending alot of time infront of screens. What are the long term effects of this? Not to even getting started on preventing babies from seeing human faces for a period of time only to introduce them on a screen later. That doesn't seem safe, it doesn't seem wise. The best that we know babies need skin to skin, and they they love looking up at thier mommy while nursing from a breast or bottle. What kind of long term effects could now these poor little ones in the study go through.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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Was hoping for something more

I always enjoyed learning about communication so I figured I'd love this book, but I was instead underwhelmed and I found it quite tedious to get through.

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Boring

Bad performance and very boring to listen to!!!! I Would not recommend new moms to buy this

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