Infant Language Development

An infant is considered any child from birth to 12 months of age. In this first year of development, children learn to control their vision, explore their environment through interacting with it, and learn about the things around them. These first 12 months are also extremely important for a child's language and social development. Children are able to develop relationships with those surrounding them, in which they learn to love and trust those that are a big part of their lives. While at this age, a child isn't quite producing real words, their language is developing in many different ways. The following sections will dive into how the different aspects (content, form, use, cognition) of language develop in an infant.

Content

• Although much of early language development is thought to be receptive (reacting to sounds and familiar voices) there are early stages of productive language that occur.

  • 0 to 13 months is referred to as the prelinguistic stage. This stage is characterized by gurgling, cooing, and laughter. Though these sounds often lack intention they help the infant gain awareness of their articulators and the power (sound) associated with them. Eventually these sounds evolve into longer strings of vowels or consonants called vocal play. Between 6 and 13 months vowel and consonant sounds are combined to form babbles such as ma-ma, da-da, ba-ba.

  • Once an infant has practiced production of speech sounds they eventually use those sounds with intention (for example saying baba every time they want their bottle). This period is called the linguistic stage and often occurs as early as 12 months. Shortly after this time (beginning at around 14 months) is when we also start to see emergence of a child's first words, followed by several other single word utterances. Words that occur during this early stage of language development are often vocabulary frequently used within their environment (puppy, go, bye-bye).

Form

As infants are developing vocabulary, they gradually begin to piece together the rules that govern how we communicate, otherwise known as syntax. While an understanding of grammar comes in later years, infants are working on understanding basic sounds, gestures, word parts and whole words. From there they grow an understanding of how to organize those components of language to achieve their goal.

A few milestones related to the development of language form are:

• Babbling: Infants are in the process of testing out new sounds. At around 5 months old, they will start with reduplicated babbling such as "ba-ba-ba" or "da-da-da" and eventually work up to variegated babbling such as "ba-da-ga" or "ma-ba-da". While this may seem like a simple addition, infants are making some big growth in determining how phrases are structured within their language, and learning the rules that govern what sounds can come after one another.

• Jargoning: After babbling, infants will typically move onto jargon by around 9 months old. This next step in language development takes the babbling they have been doing and combines it with the prosody of adult speech that they observe around them. While the words for many things may not be present yet, infants are typically able to express themselves more effectively by the structure of their jargon.

Use

Over the first year of life, infants develop the use of language. The moment a baby is born, they begin to cry. Over the course of time, infants develop the use of their cry. During this first stage of language development, infants learn the ability to use their cry for different things such as food, comfort, and love. Infants use their expressive language skills to communicate the want/need with their caregiver through the use of their cry.

Other milestones for use of infant language development includes:

• Reacting in some way (startle) to loud noises

• Smiling when seeing their caregiver

• Cooing and imitating sounds they hear in their environment

• Laughing and babbling

• Beginning to use gestures such as arm reaching, arm waving, and pointing

Cognition

In addition to the changes in content, form and use of language, infants cognition also changes and develops in the first year of their lives. During this time, they are learning much about their environments and themselves as they interact in those environments. Over the course of the first 12 months of life, many cognitive developments and milestones are observed.

• In the first 12 months of an infant's life, the first notable cognitive achievement you are likely to see is a basic understanding of spatial awareness, or learning that objects (including themselves) take up space. During this initial period of learning their environments, you are likely to see:

  • The infant putting items in their mouths, watching as items are moved around a space, and looking at objects with interest.

  • Shaking, throwing, and banging items/objects together.

  • Poking, pointing, and understanding the names of some items/objects.

• The second notable cognitive development likely to be seen at this age is the development of object permanence, or learning that objects exist even when they cannot be seen.

  • By around 8 months old, children have an understanding of object permanence and may not find games like "peekaboo" as entertaining because they now know that the person does not disappear and reappear but instead are just behind an object or their hands.

Now that you've gotten a crash course in infant language development you can see how exciting this period is! Infants learn to do so many things and are very motivated to engage with you and all the things they see around them. It is important to remember that each and every child grows and develops at their own pace. Keep in mind the flexibility of these milestones as you watch your little one grow!