Problems Crib talk is a topic that has not been heavily researched within child development. The lack of research is likely due to the difficulty in transcription. Young children typically have poor pronunciation, and there is often little context to infer the meaning of a child's words, even with the help of a parent. This has limited the number of children studied and the length of time over which the development of crib talk monologues have been researched. The children studied are also atypical in that they are the offspring of researchers or their close colleagues, and so are from highly educated backgrounds. The child studied by
Katherine Nelson, for example, was highly precocious in her language abilities, which raises questions about the generality of findings on that one child.
Studies Crib talk was first studied by Ruth Hirsch Weir on her son Anthony and published in 1962. Two other studies have been carried out by Stan Kuczaj on 14 children between 15 and 30 months – published in 1983 – and Katherine Nelson on Emily in 1989. In 2000, crib talk research was conducted on a young girl named Nora. In this research, Nora's talk was examined before she slept as her parents recorded her from the age of 46 to 50 months. Nora's age was older than most other studies done on children's crib talk, as the average age is between 15 and 36 months. Over this period of time, a total of 60 pre-sleep recordings were collected. Research on crib talk has also been conducted on developmentally challenged children with autism and psychotic disorders. A study was conducted on three autistic children and two psychotic children. The data collected on these children was important to compare the functionality, form, and content to normally developing children. ==Examples==