Infant Talk boxes?

January 30th, 2022
ideas, kids, music, tech
I often play music with Nora (7M) sitting on my lap, and she loves to play with my talk box tube:


(youtube)

This is just something we do for fun, but it makes me wonder: could this sort of play help babies learn to talk sooner?

A talk box is a speaker with a tube that pipes its sound into your mouth. You use your mouth to filter the incoming audio, emphasizing some frequencies relative to others, and then you and others hear the modified sound. In music this can be used to make an instrument appear to talk/sing, or it can be used a bit like a wah-wah, to dynamically adjust the tone.

Now, this is very speculative and probably wrong, but here's my idea for how it might help a baby practice talking. What if most of the time in learning how to talk is learning how to shape the sounds with your mouth? Babies babble a lot, limited by some combination of vocal cord stamina and interest, but having some talk box time could let them get in additional practice?

Referenced in:

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Starting With Chords

A lot of people play fiddle. Basically nobody starts by learning chords before learning melodies. But that's actually how I learned. I started with chords. One of the nice things about learning to play violin this way is that you can go busking even…

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts November 15, 2024

Stuffies

I have some stuffies and I just have a bunny. Bunny is a rabbit. Woof is a seal. My favorite stuffie is bun bun. I play with my stuffies. Sometimes I jump up with them and I roll them. I can just throw them in the air when I want to play bthululubp wi…

via Nora Wise's Blog Posts November 15, 2024

You Can Buy A Malaria Net

2024 election takes

via Thing of Things November 6, 2024

more     (via openring)