Language Development and Prelinguistic Speech Stages

Vocabulary flashcards covering cognitive foundations, nonword repetition, phonetic features, prelinguistic speech stages, and early language development concepts.

Nonverbal IQ

A category of intelligence that includes memory, attention, and pattern perception, which is largely biological and remains stable at an early age.

Nonword Repetition Task

An assessment tool, such as the Duncan and Campbell task created in 1998, used to evaluate phonological memory and a child's short-term memory for language by having them repeat unfamiliar sound sequences.

Phonological Memory

The cognitive capability to process, retain, and repeat speech sounds and short-term language sequences.

Motherese (Infant-Directed Speech)

A universal style of speech used across cultures when engaging with infants, characterized by a slower pace, simplified structure, pitch variations, and repetition to highlight word boundaries.

Statistical Learning

A learning mechanism where higher frequency language elements are learned faster because children track frequencies in the speech they hear.

Place of Articulation

A phonetic feature describing the location in the mouth or the specific articulators involved in producing a consonant sound.

Manner of Articulation

A phonetic feature describing how the airflow or airstream is manipulated during the production of a consonant sound.

Voicing

A phonetic feature determined by whether or not the vocal folds vibrate during the production of a speech sound.

Cognate Pairs

Pairs of consonant sounds that differ by only one phonetic feature, such as place, manner, or voicing.

Stage 1 Prelinguistic Speech

• Reflexive crying and vegetative sounds

• 0-6 weeks

• distinctive cries based on needs

• air passing through the vocal tract

• unintentional

• not a lot of bodily control

Stage 2 Prelinguistic Speech

• cooing and laughter

• 6-8 weeks

• joint attention

• lots of open vowels actively attending

• social interaction

• statistical learning starts through joint attention

Stage 3 Prelinguistic Speech

• vocal play/ expansion stage

• 16-30 weeks

• marginal babbling

• auditory loop starts

• social interaction is not needed for this stage to occur

• growling/grumbling/rasberries

• explore articulators

Stage 4 Prelinguistic Speech

• reduplicated/cononical babbling

• 6-8 months

• cv syllables-mamama

• landmark stage

• auditory feedback loop is fully developed

• become cultural bound listeners

• babbling drift

Stage 5 Prelinguistic Speech

• nonreduplicated babbling

• 10×12 months

• producing more complex syllables

• jargon

• 9-12 consonants

• picking up prosody and intonation

• protowords

Auditory Feedback Loop

A self-monitoring system in speech development that allows individuals to listen to their own vocal output and match it to environmental language sounds.

Marginal Babbling

Early exploratory vocalization occurring during the expansion stage that features non-clear syllables, grunts, growls, and repetitive sound combinations.

Reduplicated Babbling

Vocalizations involving the repetition of identical consonant-vowel syllables, such as 'mama' or 'dada', characteristic of canonical babbling.

Variegated Babbling

Complex babbling patterns where consonant and vowel sounds vary across consecutive syllables in an utterance.

Jargon

Pre-speech babbling produced with natural adult-like intonation, pitch variation, and prosody.

Proto Words (Phonetically Consistent Forms / Quasi Words)

Invented, consistent sound representations used repeatedly by a child to refer to a specific object, action, or meaning prior to using real words.

Babbling Drift

The transition occurring around 6 months of age where an infant's babbling shifts from universal sounds to the specific sounds of their surrounding language culture.