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Infants Aged 0-18 months
The first year of a baby's life is an incredible period of growth and learning for both the infant and their caregivers. The manner in which your child begins to grow and learn language is dependent on the amount of exposure that you as the caregiver and other members of your community give to your child. By incorporating language into all aspects of your daily routine, you will fill your child’s ears with the sounds and language they need to thrive and learn language in the first years of their life. Below are some key hallmark language and cognitive gains to look out for as your child grows and develops.
Development of Language Content
Development of Language Content
For normal-hearing children, sound perception begins in utero. Once born, children are exposed to environmental sounds, music, and speech and begin to process and categorize these sounds. With ongoing exposure, the infant brain detects patterns, which set the foundation for language.
By 3 months, infants begin to broadly link language and cognition and begin to tune this link specifically to human voices. This enables infants to tune out extraneous noise and focus on speech sound patterns and prosodic undertones. Infants may be particularly interested in words spoken using "Parentese" (the singsong and often high-pitched tone typically used with babies), as these are distinct from background noise and may therefore be a stronger focal point for their attention.
At around 6 months, infants begin to develop object categorization due to listening to language around them.
At around 9 months, infants begin to demonstrate awareness of the relationships between some words and the materials/experiences they symbolize, indicating the emergence of true receptive language ability. Through exposure and experience, infants entering this stage begin to form an associative relationship between certain sound sequences and their outcomes (such as hearing the word milk and associating it with feeding). As would be expected, words for common items are understood first, with nouns generally taking precedence in the child's emerging lexicon.
At roughly 12 months, most children will say their first "true word". This is an important language milestone that indicates that the infant is able to intentionally use language. While infants may produce utterances that sound like words as early as 6 or 7 months ("mama" "dada"), a "true word" meets certain criteria, such as consistency, intent, phonemic similarity to the word target, and the ability to recognize the word when others say it.
Language development begins to accelerate as the child advances through the second year. During this period, children begin to understand and respond to different communicative functions and follow commands ("bring it here" "get the ball"). As the child's receptive language increases, so to does speech output, which is strongly influenced by physiological constraints, exposure to ambient language, and interests. By 18 months, infants may begin to combine words into 2-word utterances and modify words (such as the early-emerging present progressive -ing).
Development of Language form
Development of Language form
At around 4-6 months:
Uses a variety of noises, such as those that start with p, b, and m, and babbles in a speech like manner.
At around 7months-1 year:
lengthy and short sets of sounds ("tata, upup, bibibi") are used in babble.
mimics various speech sounds
At around one year of age, children begin to say their first word. This “one word, one sentence” pattern is produced by the child.
Some examples of first words include: mama, dada, dog, no
The words produced are mainly noun-like in nature (such as dada, and dog). Typically, children use verbs and adjectives in the toddler stage of development.
As infants transition into toddlerhood, they will continue to create longer utterance lengths, with the use of more nouns, verbs, adjectives, and even some conjunctions (and, or, but).
Development of Language Use
Development of Language Use
Around 0-4 months the child will develop different cries in different contexts (hungry vs tired etc), cooing and gooing begin along with pleasure sounds like “mmm” which may indicate moods status
At the end of 6 months the child will begin to babble and use their voice to show likes and dislikes
During 9-18 months the child will begin to use sounds and words intentionally in social contexts, exclamations also begin to appear such as “ooh!”, imitation begins and child will try to talk as fast as their parent (may be babble)
By the end of 18 months the child should be able to follow some commands and understand names of people, objects, and body parts which will contribute to increase use of language in social contexts
Cognition
Cognition
What is cognition? - The acquisition of understanding and knowledge about concepts through thought, experience, and senses. Cognition relates to the input and storage of information.
Infants go through a sensorimotor period - where they learn about the world through their senses and motor skills. This period consists of six substages, and stages 0-5 are covered birth to 18 months: reflexes, primary circular reactions, secondary circular reactions, coordination of circular reactions, tertiary circular reactions.
Some major gains in cognition during infancy:
Primary Circular Reactions - infants are very focused on their body in this stage and take what they have learned about their own bodies (reflexive actions) and expand on that (i.e., an infant will wiggle their fingers and kick their legs because it feels pleasurable and interesting to them)
Secondary Circular Reactions - infants begin to discover that behavior has impacts on the things around them (i.e., repeatedly shaking a rattle to hear the noise), there is a shift from them only being interested in their own bodies to having an interest in the environment around them as well!
4-8 months
Tertiary Circular Reactions - infants in this stage are more creative in their behavior and are more likely to experiment with the effects of their actions (i.e., knocking over a tower of blocks but then attempting to put them back together in a new construction)
12-18 months
Conclusion
Conclusion
Although the above gains in the development of an infant’s language represent the typical developmental pattern that infants go through, these hallmark gains along the infant’s developmental journey are not set in stone. Every child is different and will grow and develop at their own rates. If you do not see these typical hallmark features in your child’s language at the expected age, remember that development is not always linear and if you have concerns, contact your pediatrician or other trusted medical professional for next steps.
References
References
Kaplan, Dr. A. (2018, June 12). Language milestones 1 to 2 years: First words, gestures, and more. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/baby/toddler-language-milestones
Language development: Speech milestones for babies. (2023). Mayo Clinic.
Zeller, R. (2018). Language Development milestones 0-18 months. Sound Hearing Audiology and Speech.
Image: https://www.verywellmind.com/sensorimotor-stage-of-cognitive-development-2795462
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