"To develop spoken language, children must hear it. The more language that is addressed to children, the bigger their vocabulary will be later on. But these vocabulary words are not learned because they were uttered out of context-as current chatbots might. Rather, these words were learned because they were spoken by nurturing adults who made the words come alive and offered them in sentences children had to practice understanding."
"Take the word airplane. When a child points to the sky, the parent might say, "That's an airplane! See the wings?" and talk about how that airplane will soon take them to visit Grandma. Currently, chatbots can't do that. We can speculate from decades of research that chatbot talk is unlikely to improve young children's language outcomes. In fact, if allowed to replace conversations with parents and caregivers, as we've seen with other types of digital media, chatbots may impede children's language learning."
AI chat toys and robot companions can conduct limited conversations and respond quickly, but they lack the rich contextual grounding that supports spoken language learning. Young children build vocabulary by hearing language directed to them in context, delivered by nurturing caregivers who point, describe, and embed words in meaningful sentences. Chatbots cannot see a child's environment or make physical referents come alive in the same way. If AI toys replace caregiver-child conversations, they risk impeding vocabulary growth. At most, AI toys may supplement conversation but cannot substitute for caregiver-led interaction that drives language development.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]