❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
Infant Development
Birth - 3
​
This handout includes information regarding Prelinguistic Vocalizations + approximate age of acquisition,
Joint Attention, Major LENA findings, Dore’s Primitive Speech Acts, First Words, and Syntactic and
Pragmatic Development.
~ Age of
Acquisition
Prelinguistic Vocalizations
0-1 Month:
Reflexive cries, burps, sneezes, coughs and vegetative sounds
1 - 4 Months:
Cooing, differentiated cries, laughing
4 - 6 Months:
Transitional babbling, vocal play, longer segments, prolonging sounds
6 - 8 Months:
Reduplicated babbling (repeated CV syllables)
8 - 12 Months:
Echolalia (immediate imitation), Jargon, Variegated babbling (CVC and VCV
combinations)
​ ​Joint Attention:
★ Alternating: ​Child and caregiver alternating to keep the attention in the interaction
★ Pointing: ​Child pointing to keep the attention of the caregiver and the caregiver
giving interacting with the child
★ Showing: ​The child showing different objects to the caregiver toe keep their attention
★ Responding to joint attention: ​It is important for the caregiver to respond to the
child’s effort to get their attention to show that they are interested.
LENA Findings:
Parents estimated that they talked more to their child than they actually did
Mothers talked ~9% more to their daughters than to their sons
Children of talkative parents were also talkative
The more television in a child’s day, the lower his/her language ability scores tended to be
​Parents talk more to their first born than to their other children
❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
​ Development of Speech Acts:
➔ Perlocutionary (0-8 months): ​Infants respond to the environment using
reflexive communication. Infants are not intentionally communicating besides
crying and nonspecific use of their face and body
➔ Illocutionary (8-12 months): ​Infants start combing gestures with
vocalizations to express specific and recognizable communicative function
➔ Locutionary (12 months +): ​Children begin to use words to communicate with
intention
⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯​⋯
​F
​ irst Words ​
The utterance must have phonetic relationship to an adult word, and the child must use the
words consistently in the presence of a particular situation or object
First 50 words:​ (pre systematic) - child acquires the whole word (Holophrastic), one
word conveys the whole idea
​S
​ yntactic Development:
Two-word combinations - beginnings of
syntax
Semantic-syntactic relations:
demonstrative + entity
entity + attribute
possessor + possession
entity + location
action + location
agent + object
agent + action
action + object
​P
​ ragmatic Development:
Contingent responding:
Parent’s prompt response to a
child’s behavior or verbalization
◦ ​ ​Facial expressions
◦​ ​Movements
◦ ​ ​Gestures
◦ ​Verbalization