Stages of Acquisition and Prelinguistic Development

What is the developmental stage from 0-12 months?

A: Prelinguistic.

This is the period before conventional spoken language, but infants are already developing the perceptual, vocal, social, and communicative foundations needed for language.

Q: What are Oller's stages of prelinguistic vocal development?

Age	Stage	Main characteristic
0–2 mo	Reflexive	Crying, fussing, vegetative sounds
2–4 mo	Cooing/gooing	“Coo/goo”; back consonants + vowels
4–6 mo	Expansion/vocal play	Experiments with pitch, loudness, sounds
6–10 mo	Canonical babbling	Adult-like CV syllables; bababa
10–15 mo	Jargon/variegated babbling	Conversational-sounding babble

Q: What happens during canonical babbling?

A: Around 6–10 months, infants:

• shift from back sounds toward front sounds, particularly /m, b, d/

• produce sequences of CV (consonant-vowel) syllables

• show adult-like syllable timing

• produce reduplicated babbling: bababa, tatata

• begin producing variegated babbling: dabadigo

Reduplicated babbling

Reduplicated = SAME: ba-ba-ba

Variegated Babbling

Variegated = VARIED: da-ba-di-go

Q: What is jargon?

A: Advanced, conversational-sounding babbling occurring approximately 10–15 months. It increasingly resembles the rhythm/intonation of the child's native language.

The sounds found in this period are also typically those appearing in children's first words, so canonical syllables serve as building blocks for words.

Q: When do infants' vocalizations begin reflecting their native language?

A: Approximately 8–12 months (0;8–1;0).

This is an important transition from relatively universal infant speech abilities toward language-specific production.

Q: What important perceptual milestones occur during the first year?

A:

Birth → prefers mother's voice
Birth → prefers native language
4 months → prefers own name
9 months → prefers frequent phonotactic patterns

Q: When does the ability to discriminate non-native sounds decline?

A: It begins declining around 8 months and is largely lost around 10 months, according to Werker & Tees.

Their English-learning infants went from high discrimination of Hindi/Salish contrasts at 6–8 months to very low discrimination by 10–12 months.

⭐ Think:

Young baby = UNIVERSAL listener

↓ exposure to native language ↓

Older baby = NATIVE-LANGUAGE specialist

Q: What variables influence variation in an individual child's language development?

INPUT + INTERACTION + CAREGIVER + CULTURE + CHILD

Language learning is enhanced or impeded by the type, complexity, and style of input a child receives.

Q: What is the critical period for language acquisition?

A: A biologically sensitive period during development in which adequate linguistic input is particularly important for typical language acquisition.

Q: What happens when a child does NOT receive adequate language input?

A: Language development can be severely limited or may fail to develop typically.

The revised slide specifically discusses children exposed to severe neglect/isolation and states that there are well-known examples of children who received limited language input and did not develop language. The professor's takeaway is:

Language is learned through social interaction.

Q: Why are feral/isolated children relevant to language acquisition?

A: They demonstrate that simply having the biological capacity for language is insufficient without adequate environmental/social input.

The revised slides explicitly clarify:

Infants have a biological capacity for language, but without social interaction, these capacities will not reach their potential.

Q: When does the critical period end?

From the critical-period material you provided earlier, your professor's framing was approximately age 5 for L1, although estimates can extend toward puberty.

Don't interpret this as an on/off switch where language suddenly becomes impossible. That's why “sensitive period” is often a useful way to conceptualize it.

Q: What about second-language (L2) acquisition?

A: The sensitive/critical period for second-language learning extends later than the period emphasized for first-language acquisition, with the earlier lecture placing estimates around puberty through the late teens (~17–18).

The important concept is that learning capacity gradually declines rather than suddenly disappearing.

Q: What does the Kuhl (2003, 2007) study tell us?

A: Live social interaction facilitates language learning in a way that passive TV exposure did not in this study.

Method:

10-month-old infants being raised in an English-language environment were exposed to Mandarin.

They received:

• 12 sessions

• 25 minutes each

• play and reading

After 5–12 days, researchers tested Mandarin sound discrimination with a head-turn task.

Results:

Mandarin IN PERSON → discriminated Mandarin sounds ✅

Mandarin on TV → did NOT discriminate Mandarin sounds ❌

Conclusion:

Kuhl interpreted this and related work as evidence that:

Language learning requires social interaction.

🚨 Memorize:

KUHL = LIVE PERSON > TV

What is IDS/CDS?

A: Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) or Child-Directed Speech (CDS) is a characteristic way adults may speak to infants/children.

The revised slides also give the older term “Motherese.”

Q: What are the characteristics of IDS/CDS?

(KNOW 3 Categories)

1. Paralinguistic/prosodic

• Higher overall pitch

• Exaggerated pitch contours

• Slower tempo

2. Syntactic/semantic

• Shorter MLU

• Fewer clauses

• Infant-specific lexical items: tummy, binky, ba-ba

• Content words related to the child's world

• Few function words

3. Discourse/Pragmatics

• More repetition

• Repetition of words/phrases

Q: Is IDS/CDS identical across all cultures?

The revised slide says IDS/CDS characteristics are common across languages, but not all cultures show as much variation as American English.

Q: What caregiver behaviors promote language learning?

• Wait and listen

• Follow the child's lead

• Join in and play

• Be face-to-face

• Use a variety of questions and labels

• Encourage turn-taking

• Expand and extend the child's attempts

Q: How can caregivers teach infants the structure of conversation before infants can actually talk?

A: Caregivers treat infant behavior as communicative and establish back-and-forth turn-taking.

Baby vocalizes → caregiver responds → pauses → baby responds → caregiver responds again

Q: What kinds of behaviors may adults initially treat as conversational responses?

The cultural-variable slide gives a really useful developmental progression:

3 months → burping, eye gaze, movement, etc.

7 months → vocalization/babbling

12 months → adults may interpret vocalizations as words depending on context.

Q: What are signs of communicative intent?

A: Look for behaviors showing that the infant is deliberately trying to affect another person, such as:

• Eye contact/gaze

• Gestures

• Pointing/reaching/showing

• Intentional vocalizations

• Coordinating gaze between a person and an object

• Turn-taking

• Persistence until the communication partner responds

Q: What are the three stages of early communicative development?

A:

Perlocutionary → Illocutionary → Locutionary

which corresponds to:

Partner-perceived → Intentional/nonverbal → Symbolic

Q: What is PERLOCUTIONARY communication?

A: Partner-perceived communication.

The infant isn't necessarily deliberately communicating yet, but the caregiver interprets the behavior as communicative.

Example: Baby cries → parent interprets this as “I'm hungry.”

🧠 PER = PARENT perceives

Q: What is ILLOCUTIONARY communication?

A: Intentional, nonverbal communication.

The child deliberately communicates using things such as:

• gestures

• gaze

• pointing

• reaching

• intentional vocalization

Example: Baby points toward a bottle while looking at Mom.

🧠 ILLO = INTENTIONAL

Q: What is LOCUTIONARY communication?

A: Symbolic communication.

The child uses conventional symbols/words to communicate.

Example: Child says “milk” to request milk.

Q: What is joint attention?

A: When the child and another person share attention toward the same object/event and are mutually aware of that shared focus.

IE: Baby + caregiver are both attending to the dog.

Q: When does joint attention emerge?

Birth–6 months → attention primarily to social partners

6–9 months → increasing attention to objects/world

9–12 months → integration of people + objects / emerging joint attention and social cognition

So for an exam question asking “When does joint attention emerge?”, know:

⭐ Approximately 9–12 months.

Q: How does joint attention facilitate word learning?

A: It helps the infant determine what the adult's word refers to.

Joint attention helps establish word–referent mappings.

Q: What is an expressive caregiver style?

A:

• More prescriptive

• Fewer utterances

• Focuses on personal/social language

Example from the Kaye slide:

“Come on. Talk. Talk to me. Can you talk?”

🧠 EXPRESSIVE = commands/social

Q: What is a referential caregiver style?

A:

• More descriptive

• More utterances

• Greater emphasis on labeling/describing

Example:

“Is that a burp?... Are you going to get the hiccups?”

🧠 REFERENTIAL = REFER to/describe things

Q: What did Kaye (1980) study?

A: Caretaker conversational style.

The lecture contrasts two examples of mothers interacting with their infants.

Findings:

Mother 1 → Expressive

• more prescriptive

• fewer utterances

• personal/social focus

Mother 2 → Referential

• more descriptive

• more utterances

• labeling focus

⭐ Exam association:

KAYE = identified/illustrated EXPRESSIVE vs. REFERENTIAL conversational styles

DELLA CORTA, BENEDICT & KLEIN (1983): Methods and Main Conclusion

A: Researchers recorded 5 mothers in each group during normal caretaking events such as bathing and dressing.

They compared referential vs. expressive mothers.

---

Q: What did they find?

A:

Measure	Referential	Expressive
MLU	4.3	4.0
Utterances/event	21	6
Descriptives	20	13
Prescriptives	7	13

Main conclusion:

Referential mothers talk more and use more descriptive language.

⭐ Association:

DELLA CORTA = DATA demonstrating expressive vs. referential differences

FURROW, NELSON & BENEDICT (1979) Methods

Q: What was the method?

A: 7 children were observed at:

18 months → and again at → 27 months

A wide range of language measures was recorded.

WHICH ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE ARE MOST AFFECTED BY DIFFERENCES IN ADULT INPUT

FURROW, NELSON & BENEDICT (1979): Q: What caregiver input had FACILITATIVE effects?

A: Adult use of:

• Yes/no questions

• Nouns

was associated with children showing:

• more auxiliaries

• more verbs

• longer MLU

FURROW, NELSON & BENEDICT (1979): Q: What caregiver input had PROHIBITIVE effects?

A: Adult use of:

• pronouns

• verbs

• different words

was associated in this study with:

• fewer child verbs

• shorter MLU

Don't turn that into the broader rule “pronouns are bad for children.” Memorize it as the finding reported for this particular study.

Q: What is the MAIN conclusion of Furrow, Nelson & Benedict (1979)?

Adult speech should be at an INTERMEDIATE level of complexity.

Too simple → child may not acquire all aspects of grammar.

Too complex → child may not be able to extract the grammar.

🧠 Think GOLDILOCKS:

❌ Too simple
✅ JUST RIGHT
❌ Too complex

Q: Do all cultures interact with babies in the same way?

A: NO.

The professor explicitly emphasizes that cultural attitudes toward infants vary greatly, and this changes caregiver-infant communication.

Q: What are examples of common practices among English-speaking parents in the lecture?

A:

• Face-to-face games

• Peekaboo

• Book reading

• Attempts to elicit responses from infants

Expectations change with age:

3 mo → gaze/movement/etc. interpreted as responses
7 mo → vocalizations/babbling
12 mo → vocalizations may be interpreted as words depending on context.

Q: What cultural examples should I know?

Mohave → infant considered capable of understanding adult language.

Samoan → considered impolite for parents to speak to very young infants.

Javanese → infants described in the lecture as considered “not yet human.”

The slides also discuss Malawi, where babies may be carried on mothers' backs, resulting in less face-to-face contact and less infant-directed speech during daily routines.