When it comes to speaking to children, the issue is not speaking up; rather, it’s slowing down, according to Wichita State University audiology professor Ray Hull. Hull has been researching and offering his expertise on the rate of adults’ speech and the processing capacity of the maturing central nervous system in young children.

Hull found that adults who speak too rapidly can overload children’s central nervous systems and, in turn, inhibit their ability to learn. He was recently featured in a January edition of Advance magazine, a national speech-language-audiology publication, discussing the effects of rapid speech on the learning process.

According to Hull, the average adult speaks between 160 and 170 words per minute (wpm) while the average child age 5 to 7 can process speech at a rate of only 124 wpm. When teachers and parents speak too quickly for children to understand, learning can be hindered. What may appear as inattention is simply not being able to process what was said.

“If [the new concepts] are not being given to them at a rate that allows their central nervous system to process the information with efficiency, then that places those children in jeopardy,” Hull told Advance. “They’re not going to do as well in understanding and retaining the information.”

The solution, Hull said, is to slow down.

“When you slow the rate of speech down from 170 wpm to 124 wpm, vowels and consonants and sounds of speech become more precisely articulated,” Hull said. “We begin to articulate speech with a greater execution, so we are doubling the understandability of what is being said.”

Hull believes there would be fewer diagnoses of auditory processing problems if teachers would simply slow their speech.

Another problem that Hull suggests impairs learning is square and rectangle-shaped classrooms filled with desks and chalkboards because of hard surfaces’ tendency to reverberate and distort sound. Combine this with mile-a-minute speech, and you’ve added more difficulty in speech understanding.

“Classrooms do strange things to our auditory systems and distort speech,” Hull said. “Cut down on reverberation and amplify a teacher’s voice, and I think people would be amazed at how children would learn.”

In addition to teachers, Hull said parents can benefit from this research, too. Rather than speaking to their child at their average rate of 160 wpm, slowing speech to a rate of 120 wpm, or a rate in line with the maturity of their child’s central nervous system, would alleviate frustration on both ends.