Language is commonly defined as an organized way of combining symbols in order to communicate. It may consist of words (i.e., spoken sounds) or gestures (e.g., as in sign language, or body language). Considerable research has found that intellectual/cognitive development is correlated with language development. Think about it for a moment. Language is an important medium of thought. Growth in the knowledge and skills of children is correlated with growth in the number of words (i.e., vocabulary) that represent and convey facts and procedures. In a sense, a child's vocabulary is the repository of their knowledge, whether in the form of concepts or words that refer to things in the child's world. So, if you wish to nurture your child's mental growth, you should learn more about their language development. In this section, the primary focus will be on the development of language skills during infancy, i.e., between birth and two years of age. The continued development of these skills during childhood will be covered in another section. Click here if you wish to read about language development during childhood.
One of the first things to know about spoken language is that its purpose is to communicate. This is important to keep in mind because spoken language is only one of several means employed by infants to communicate. At first, infants do not understand the importance of words and they attempt to communicate with their gestures, tone of voice, and nonspeech sounds (i.e., nonverbally). This has prompted Kathleen Berger to observe that the intent of infants is to communicate rather than use words (Berger, 2000). Of course, one of the primary goals of education is to reduce the child's reliance on nonverbal forms of communication and strengthen the ability to communicate clearly merely by using words, e.g., as in essays or exams. This is also referred to as becoming "literate". In addition, children must become proficient in the use of nonverbal forms of communication, as these constitute significant channels of information. By adolescence, children come to understand that the nonverbal aspects of the message may actually reverse the meaning of the verbal message.
Psychologists make a distinction between receptive speech and productive (or expressive) speech. Receptive speech refers to speech that is understood. Productive speech refers to speech that is be produced. In general, infants tend to do better at receptive speech than productive speech. They same is true of adults learning a foreign language (or Psychology). That is, our ability to recognize sounds and words tends to exceed our ability to actually produce those sounds and words. As a result, infants tend to understand verbal communications better than they can produce them.
At birth, human infants tend to be attracted to the sound of the human voice, especially the voice of their mother. They also come equipped with a voice of their own, and hopefully a pair of healthy lungs. Interestingly, human adults also tend to find the sound of an infant crying to be one of the most disturbing of all sounds.
Since most communications during the first year (or so) of life tend to be nonverbal, communications during this period are said to be "prelinguistic", i.e., before words. Neonates begin expressing themselves vocally literally within seconds of being born. In fact, many doctors consider crying at birth to be a sign of a healthy baby. During the first few days, human neonates display the capacity to discriminate between, and produce, a wide range of sounds. For instance, researchers have discovered that by the end of the first month of life, most infants can discriminate between all of the different sounds that humans can vocalize in any language. On the other hand, although each normal infant is born with the capacity to learn any language on earth, the neonate's capacity to produce sounds is still extremely limited.
The first types of communication displayed by human neonates are usually reflexive, e.g., cries, movements, and facial expressions. The first type of noncrying vocalization produced by typical neonates is cooing. Cooing includes a variety of basic speech sounds, such as oooooooh, eeeeeeh, and aaaah. Many of these sounds are produced accidently at first, since neonates are not born with the ability to intentionally produce specific speech sounds. However, with practice, and in response to reinforcement, infants tend to continue to produce the speech sounds of their native language.
Between 3-6 months infants begin to babble. This is often in response to the sounds made by other people. Hearing others communicate vocally inspires infants to reciprocate with vocalizations of their own. This has been referred to as "mutual contagion". Some recent research suggests that this tendency may be innate, and mediated by special nerve cells called "mirror neurons". This is an important factor for caregivers to consider as they teach babies how to speak.
Babbling continues for several months. However, by about seven months infants add the capacity for repetitive babbling. In repetitive babbling infants repeat the same speech sounds over and over again, e.g., dadadada. During this period most babies will learn how to say, "dada" before "mama". Fathers like this because it gives the impression that the baby is acknowledging the father's unique presence, e.g., as opposed to the mother's. However, the reality is that infants tend to say, "dada" before "mama" for the simple reason that "dada" is easier to learn. What is most important about repetitive babbling is that it consists of infants practicing making deliberate and precise sounds. They are gaining control of their lips, lungs, and vocal chords, and learning how to make them work together to produce distinctive sounds at will.
At the same time that infants are engaging in babbling, they are also making progress in the pragmatic aspects of verbal communication. For instance, between 7-10 months of age infants begin to display a preference for speech with normal pauses. By eight months of age infants can distinguish rising from falling intonations. This is important for distinguishing statements from questions. By nine months of age, infants know how to take turns in conversations, even though they still can't speak. Between 7-12 months of age infants develop the ability to vary their own pitch, as though making statements or asking questions. And between 10-14 months of age infants increasingly coordinate their pointing and babbling.
Between 10-12 months of age, infants begin to use protowords. These are sounds that are similar to but are not quite words. Common examples of protowords are mama, dada, and baba. Protowords are different from repetitive babbling in at least two important ways. First, while repetetive babbling involves repeating sounds over and over again (e.g., bababababa), protowords are shortened, typically to 1-2 syllables. While it is clear that in repetetive babbling the infant is just producing sounds, once they use protowords they are more closely approximatintg speech. Second, babbling has no correspondence to objects in the world. Protowords, on the other hand, generally correspond to something concrete, e.g., mama for mother. Thus, each protoword is used consistently to refer to the same object. Once protowords begin to appear infants make a transition from prelinguistic to linguistic communication.
The first real word is typically uttered between 10-13 months of age. The first words used by English speaking children tend to be nouns, normally referring to nearby, meaningful, objects, such as mommie, or ball. Curiously, the appearance of the first real words of their native language coincides with a gradual reduction in the infant's ability to discriminate speech sounds of other languages.
The onset of linguistic communication presents a new set of challenges. Each child must learn not only a large number of new words, but also the limits of the meaning of each word. It is common for children to underextend and overextend the meanings of words. In underextension, children underestimate the meaning of words. They may believe that the word for a particular category (e.g., "dog") refers only to the type of dog their familiy possesses, e.g., a poodle. When such a child sees a Collie they may think it is not a dog because it does not look like the poodle they associate with the word "dog". Similarly, children tend to also overestimate the meanings of words. A child may come to believe that the word "dog" refers to four-legged creatures. When such a child sees a cow for the first time they may turn to their parents and say something like, "Mommie, look at that big doggie". These errors are very common. They are normally corrected by caregivers, or spontaneously through experience, by about 10 years of age.
Between 14-18 months of age many children display expressive jargon. This is when a child communicates verbally by making a series of speech-like sounds that give the impression of conversation, but that do not make any sense. Expressive jargon is similar to speech in its intonation, rhythm, and flow, but is not actually speech. Of course, this is the child's attempt to communicate vocally as it learns the pragmatics and the sounds of it's native tongue.
Shortly after the appearance of the first words children begin to use holophrases. A holophrase is a single word utterance that is intended to convey a more complex thought. It is commonly accompanied by some sort of body language, such as pointing. Holophrases are also highly dependent on available contextual cues. For instance, an infant may point at a nearby bottle and say, "mine". Caregivers who are around that child quickly learn what the child means. This has prompted many guests to claim that proud parents are overestimating the language skills of their infants who use holophrases.
Finally, simple sentences begin to appear between 16-24 months of age. These simple sentences typically contain 2-3 words. They sound a lot like telegraphs, which has prompted some researchers to refer to this as "telegraphic speech". For instance, a child might say something like, "Gimme dat", or "Mine ball", usually accompanied by relevant gestures.
How Can I Nurture My Infant's Language Development?
One of the most important ways to nurture language development is to simply speak with your child. In general, the more parents speak with their children the greater the opportunities for children to learn vocabulary, and a slew of other cognitive skills. Recall that between 3-6 months of age infants display "mutual contagion", in which they tend to reciprocate speech sounds. Parents who wish to nurture the language development of their children should engage in this type of behavior. In real life it comes across as the baby making nonspeech sounds and the parent responding with speech sounds. It would be a mistake to conclude that because the baby cannot understand your words, and is not producing words of their own, this is a useless exercise. Not only does parental speech during this period help the infant learn to recognize speech sounds it is also how infants learn to take turns in conversations, and to raise or lower their pitch.
One of the most common "techniques" caregivers use to nurture verbal communication with infants is known as speaking "motherese". This involves using a high pitched tone of voice and short, clear, easy to understand sentences. Babies are especially attracted to high pitched human voices, so this is an effective way to get their attention. In my opinion, some parents fall into a minor trap here by using words or sentences that are not grammatically correct. The problem is that this models incorrect speech, at a time when infants are genetically progammed to copy whatever they hear. In the real world this seldom causes serious harm, but my own preference is to use correct grammar consistently so as not to either confuse the child or have to untrain any bad habits.
Another technique parents can use to nurture the development of their child's linguistic skills is called echoing. Echoing consists in repeating what your child says to you. This provides feedback for your child and provokes mutual contagion. Echoing often leads to a sort of feedback loop in which the infant makes the same sounds over and over again as the caregiver repeats those same sounds over and over. Such simple acts enable infants to practice deliberately making the same sounds at will. It prepares them to produce those sounds whenever they are needed later on.
Recasting is still another useful technique to nurture language development. Recasting consists of rephrasing what a child says in a more correct way. It is similar to echoing except that the caregiver does not repeat what the child says in exactly the same way. Instead, the idea is to paraphrase the child's utterance in a way that is more intelligible. For instance, if a child says, "Mine ball", the caregiver might say, "That is my ball". This way the caregive models correct speech for the child to imitate.
Labeling is a very effective technique. It consists simply of telling children the names of things. When my son was an infant, I made it a point to teach him the names of the different parts of his body. On a day when we had free time, we would sometimes take more than 20 minutes to walk one block. The reason was that I would identify objects as we passed them and make sure my son knew their names. I would identify the sidewalk, cars, car tires, doors, windows, etc.... Then, on the way back I would quiz him to make sure he remembered the names.
One other thing you can do to nurture your child's language development is to read to your child. At first, they won't understand what you are saying. But give it time. Eventually they will understand, and want to participate. During infancy the goal of reading to a child is not so much to get them to read as to enable them to develop an appreciation of what books have to offer. But this works on other levels as well. The time a parent spends reading to a child is commonly referred to as "quality time", in part because it nurtures a sense of closeness between parent and child.
Later, during childhood, books will take on a value of their own, as a tool to nurture literacy and thinking skills. Likewise, during childhood, other dimensions of language (especially reading and writing) will get a lot more attention than they do during infancy.
\Berger, K. (2000). The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, Fifth Edition. New York: Worth Publishers.