In the Beginning: Communication Development from Birth to 2 Years

Home Language

The language spoken in a child's home environment, which influences their language acquisition and development.

Critical Period

The first two years of life, considered crucial for language acquisition.

Socioeconomic Status (SES)

A composite measure that includes family income, parental education, and occupation, affecting a child's development.

Poverty Threshold

The income level set by the U.S. Census Bureau to define poverty based on family size and composition.

Human Capital

Investments made by parents in their children's upbringing, influenced by cultural beliefs about age, gender, and birth order.

Social-Cultural Capital

Resources acquired through social interactions and culture that affect children's development.

Joint Attention

The ability for a caregiver and child to focus on the same object or event, essential for language development.

Fast Mapping

The process where children quickly learn and understand words in the absence of direct teaching.

Morpheme

The smallest unit of meaning in a language that can be free or bound.

Turn Taking

The basic conversational skill of alternating speaking and listening in social interactions.

Expansions

Responses to a child's utterances where a caregiver expands on what the child has said, maintaining the original intent.

Protoimperative

Gestures used by children to control or manipulate the behavior of others.

Perlocutionary Stage

The stage where infants respond reflexively to their environment, typically from 0 to 8 months.

Illocutionary Stage

The stage characterized by infants using gestures with vocalization to convey specific meanings, between 8 and 12 months.

Locutionary Stage

The stage when infants begin to produce meaningful words, starting at 12 months.

Deictic Gestures

Gestures that call attention to objects or events, emerging around 8 to 12 months of age.

Overextension

The use of a single word to refer to multiple objects or concepts that are not entirely correct.

Underextension

The use of a general word in a limited context, such as calling only their pet dog 'dog' and not other dogs.

Parentese

A distinctive speech style that caregivers use to facilitate language learning in infants.

Socio-Political Capital

The influence of a family's socioeconomic status on their connections with community organizations and resources.

Contingent Responding

The caregiver’s adaptations in communication that align with an infant’s abilities, fostering interactive development.

Vocables

Unique sound patterns developed by children that refer to specific objects or experiences.

Pragmatic Functions

The communicative intentions behind children’s speech expressions, such as requesting or asserting.

Semantic-Syntactic Rules

Patterns that children begin to understand as they use and combine words to form meaningful sentences.

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)

An index used to measure syntactic development by calculating the average number of morphemes per utterance.