Does your child also stick out his tongue when he is concentrating?
this is the reason
Does your child stick out his tongue when concentrating on play or homework?
There is a very simple reason for this and it is mainly related to how our brain is built
Walla!
health
05/01/2022
Wednesday, 05 January 2022, 07:55
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If you've seen a toddler or even an older child concentrate on what they're doing, chances are good that you noticed one movement they made.
Taking your tongue out while concentrating may not seem strange to us, but have you ever wondered why this happens?
Dr. Gillian Forrester, a brain scientist in the field of comparative cognition and a senior lecturer in psychology, decided to dive into the depths of behavior in a 2015 paper entitled "Propagation of the Tongue: Implications for Evolution and Language Development." Forrester as published on the iflscience website.
"My colleague and I researched fine and gross motor skills and noticed that the children's tongues were active during these activities."
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To the full article
Forrester and her research colleagues put a group of young participants into a number of tasks that involve hands with increasing complexity, from opening locks to complex games.
They also told stories that would serve as a sort of control group because they did not require hand gestures.
Protrudes to the right.
Girl sticks out her tongue while playing (Photo: ShutterStock)
When they looked at the children they saw that tongue removal was indeed common while performing hand-held tasks and it seems that the tongue also popped up on the right side during the more complex activities, suggesting the source of the behavior.
"For me, the most exciting interpretation of the study is that right-tilted activity of the tongue and hands during fine motor tasks supports the idea that the hand and tongue are controlled by shared brain processes," Forrester said.
"This is an early communication system that helped move from hand gestures to speech in ancient man."
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Indeed, a 2019 study found that the area in the brain activated by complex hand movements sits right next to the one dealing with language.
This is where evolutionary origins meet human anatomy, as our hands and tongue are "the only delicate joints in our body and controlled by overlapping parts of our brain," Forrester told Live Science.
Oddly enough the two parts sit in the left hemisphere, the opposite side to where most of the tongues protrude in toddlers.
Another theory in general says that sticking the tongue out during concentration, actually shows effort.
Effort to concentrate in this case.
Just as we frown or narrow our eyes, so sticking our tongue out shows an attempt at concentration that takes away our resources and tries to isolate a thought or action in such a way that the rest of the body and thoughts do not interfere.
The probable reason why the tongue comes out mainly in children and toddlers is that their control over the body as well as their ability to concentrate is lower than that of adults and therefore involuntarily the tongue also protrudes out.
health
parenthood
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Tongue
Concentration
Children
Toddlers
anatomy