Notes on Language and Communication Development

LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION

  • Definition of Language
    • A system that relates sounds (or gestures) to meaning.
    • Components:
    • Phonology: Study of the sounds in a language
    • Semantics: Study of meaning of words
    • Syntax: Rules for combining words into sentences
    • Pragmatics: Social aspects and rules of language communication

SPEECH DEVELOPMENT

  • Early Preferences:
    • Newborns show a preference for listening to speech over non-speech sounds.
  • Phoneme Detection:
    • Infants can detect phonemes (unique sounds) by 1 month of age.
    • Exposure shapes their ability to differentiate sounds, such as R vs. L at around 9 months.
    • By 6 months, infants can identify their parents when hearing terms like "mommy" or "daddy".
  • Word Recognition:
    • Infants begin recognizing frequently heard words, usually nouns.

INFANT DIRECTED SPEECH

  • Defined as "motherese"; a speech style where adults speak slowly and with exaggerated intonation and clarity.
    • Includes eye contact and higher pitch to engage infants.
  • Deafness and Language Mastery:
    • 1 in 1,000 babies born deaf; those with deaf parents tend to master sign language at similar rates as hearing babies with verbal language.
    • The other 90% of deaf babies may receive speech therapy and lip-reading encouragement.
  • Cochlear Implants:
    • Developed in the 1990s to assist in language acquisition among deaf children.
    • Early implantation is most effective.

PATTERNS OF SPEECH DEVELOPMENT

  • Cooing:
    • Begins around 2 months, involving vowel sounds.
  • Babbling:
    • Starts at approximately 6 months, combining consonants and vowels, suggesting linguistic behavior rather than random sounds.
  • Syllable Stress and Pitch Variance:
    • Around 8-11 months, infants stress syllables and vary pitch in babbling.
  • First Words:
    • Most babies say their first word by 12 months and develop larger vocabularies by age 2 (hundreds of words) and 6 (up to 10,000 words).

LANGUAGE LEARNING

  • Naming Explosion:
    • Occurs around 18 months, where children quickly learn new words (up to 10 per week), commonly for objects.
  • Fast Mapping:
    • The ability to quickly associate new meanings with words, though they may not know all meanings.
  • Mechanisms of Learning:
    • Involves joint attention, sentence cues, and rapid cognitive growth.
  • Underextension vs. Overextension:
    • Underextension: limiting a word's meaning (e.g., “car” refers only to the family car).
    • Overextension: broadening a word's meaning (e.g., “car” for all transportation types).

SPEECH IN SENTENCES

  • Telegraphic Speech:
    • Begins around 18 months, using only essential words directly relevant to meaning.
  • Sentence Formation:
    • By 24 months, children start forming sentences while showing understanding of grammatical morphemes (-ing, -ed, -s).
  • Overregulation:
    • Mistakes in applying grammatical rules (e.g., saying "goed" instead of "went").

COMMUNICATION SKILLS

  • Conversational Turn-Taking:
    • Infants learn to participate in conversations through back-and-forth interactions.
  • Relevance in Communication:
    • Speaker's remarks must relate to the conversation. Toddlers often struggle with this.
  • Listening Skills:
    • Effective listeners should engage with the speaker's statements.
  • Understanding Complex Language:
    • Children often do not grasp metaphors and sarcasm.
  • Sensitive Period:
    • Importance of early exposure to language for development.
  • Encouraging Language Development:
    • Regular conversation with children: "Talk, talk, and talk some more!"