If you want your kids to be smarter, the key may be in how you share pauses, talking and listening turns during your interactions. A study published in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience journal shows how an increase in conversational turns positively correlates with brain growth and increased scores on children's tests in language, executive function, and reasoning.

Conversational turns refer to the back-and-forth conversation that is often experienced between a child and their parent. More than just language, conversational turns represent human engagement, and provide children with an opportunity to practice their communication skills, to listen, and to understand in an appropriate way.

In this first study of longitudinal neuroplasticity in response to changes in children’s language environments, researchers explored how children from primarily low-SES background experienced cognition and brain structure changes in response to enhanced communication environments. In a collaboration with MIT-Harvard, Dr. Rachel Romeo investigated how children’s brains changed in a randomised controlled trial of a family-based intervention. Fifty-two families with 4, 5 and 6-year-old children participated in an intervention known as “Parents and Children Making Connections — Highlighting Attention (PCMC-A),” which aims to boost adult responsiveness to children. Parents who completed the communication intervention increased the number of conversational turns they had with their children.

After using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate changes in the children’s brains, findings revealed that conversational turns are supportive of language development through cortical growth in social processing and language regions of the brain. The children who engaged in more back-and-forth conversation showed increased growth in two important language regions of the brain, suggesting that conversational turns support the language development of children via growth in specific left perisylvian brain regions.

Importantly, the socioeconomic status of the families involved did not affect results, and increased conversational turns benefited families regardless of income or parent education level.

Romeo, R.R., et al. (2021). Neuroplasticity associated with changes in conversational turn-taking following a family-based intervention. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2021.100967