Vocal Development In Infants

A parent or carer of an individual may have other preferences for the individual’s way of communicating compared to other parents/other family members/ carers.

In earlier years, adults would coo at me as I laughed and sang with my friends, assuming my high pitched and almost indistinguishable speech was simply baby talk. As my classmates and I got older, I noticed everyone was growing out of it, everyone besides me that is. My friends began to speak in a more mature and refined way,

It is believed that babies develop language when they are in the utero and it continues throughout their lifetime. By twelve weeks old, babies may register the sounds they can hear and at the same time make basic visual, auditory and tactile mind maps (Karen Kearns, 2013, P.105). This allows the infant to turn towards any familiar sounds and noises. Babies begin to communicate with people around them quite quickly. By two months old, babies begin to make ‘cooing’ and other noises; this indicates the phonological component of language development. By six to nine months babies begin to experience with a mixture of sounds, and often you will hear a baby babbling. Babbling development is similar across many different languages and even hearing impaired babies will go through this stage. They may copy the sounds they are introduced too or beginning to recognize familiar

At the age of 6-11 months babies begin to babble such things such as mama. Babies at this age often try to communicate by actions or gestures and tries to repeat simple sounds that are used a lot around them.

The difference between communicating with adults, children and young people are adults are able to process information much more quickly and

Language is a social cognitive function that developed out of our need to share ourselves with others. From their earliest days, infants feel this same need to express themselves. The mother, who is one of the first and most prominent people the infant interacts with, helps to create a bond with the child. Now the child is growing with someone whom they feel safe with and trust to share his or her inner self with. This is particularly true when the child is securely attached to his or her mother. Despite the lack of studies that directly connect attachment theory and language development, there are substantial similarities between the two ideas.Both secure attachment and infant language development flourish in mother-infant relationships that

Babies enjoy rhythm time and peek a boo games of hiding and repetition. The use of blurring and babbling will occur. The bonds with parents are

Babies prefer the sound of humans interacting to other sounds and from this, they quickly learn to recognise and identify their mother’s voice. Babies form their first relationship through emotional attachments with their mother or main carer. The first year of a baby’s life is a period of incredible growth, and a baby’s brain goes through critical periods during which stimulation is needed for proper development. During the babies first years, visual stimuli or verbal language is necessary for areas of the brain to grow and without this growth, a child’s vision or speaking abilities might be impaired. Infants tend to have different cries for hunger or pain, as well as making other noises. These abilities show your child is gaining communication and pre-language skills. Infants from birth to 6 months will forget about objects they cannot see however they begin to explore objects they can see and grab by putting them in their mouths. They will also follow moving objects with their eyes and look around at nearby objects. Infants in this stage will turn to look at a source of sound. These developmental milestones show a baby’s brain is developing and they are gaining new skills. From 7 to 12 months, infants also learn the idea of cause and effect, and they might repeat an action that causes a

At around 4-6 months old a baby will have developed an awareness of sound in particularly a person speaking and will turn towards the sound when someone familiar speaks for example their parents. They will start to mimic sounds and start to babble and laugh. Intellectual development is rapid and although they may not be able to speak in more than just babble, their understanding will be greater and they will become much more inquisitive. They will be able to understand simple instructions such as “point to your nose.” By a year old, they’ll be able to say simple words like “Mama” and “Dada” or words with similar sounds. They may start to develop their own language with odd sounding words for common objects that take their interest. Sometimes these words will sound similar to the name of the object particularly if their parents spend time speaking to their child and repeating the names of these objects.

During this stage of life, babies will begin to interact with adults that surround them by getting easily distracted by looking at their faces or listening to the sound of their voices. Babies will begin vocalising by cooing at people that they recognise and are familiar to them . A baby will recognise the sound of a parent or carer and will respond when they hear their voice, many mistake this for a baby responding to their name but this is unlikely at this stage.

| Listening to adults and other older children.Gurgling and attempts at sounds.Listening to songs and games increasing pattern awareness.

Lindsey, Eric W., Penny R. Cremeens, and Yvonne M. Caldera. "Gender Differences in Mother-toddler and Father-toddler Verbal Initiations and Responses during a Caregiving and Play Context." ProQuest Research Library [ProQuest]. Springer Science & Business Media, Sept. 2010. Web. 17 May 2016.

At a certain age infants begin to resist the unfamiliar and are very vocal in expressing their feelings (Brazelton, 1992).

As early as fifteen hours after birth, kids will leave their mothers to sequester themselves to a hiding spot, while the mother eats, rests, and ruminates. During this hiding phase, it will spend very little time with her within the first week of life, except to nurse (Lickliter & Heron). During at least the first two days of life for the neonate, vocal recognition tends to be unidirectional. That is, a kid may recognize its mother’s call, but a doe may not recognize her kid’s call. Mother-kid interactions have been found to be primarily instigated by the mother, while the offspring is in its hiding phase (Lickliter & Heron). The doe will seek out the area in which her offspring hides and let out low-pitch contact calls, to which the kid(s) will often respond with high-pitched bleats and come out of hiding to nurse. After the initial two-to-four-day delay, kids develop a bleat contour, a modulation of a small range of frequencies, which individualizes the kids’ calls (Lenhardt). Using this individualizing cue, does are able to locate their offspring more accurately, in hiding or, later, in a herd.

At 18 months, the virtual child had over 50 words at her command that she was able to use to make two-word sentences such as “Mama up” and “Doggie outside.” In their effort to further encourage the child’s development of her language skills, the parents applied B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning theory (Berk, 2012). They would respond, using slightly longer sentences such as “Yes, the doggie is outside” before introducing descriptive and useful new words. The parents would encourage imitation and respond with positive reinforcement, which would further enthuse the child to develop her language skills (Berk, 2012). When the child was 2 years old, the parents would converse with the child at any given opportunity and would read books of her choice which further influenced her language development. Research has found that when mothers are more responsive during the first few years of a child’s life enable their children to achieve language development milestones at an earlier stage than children whose mothers were less responsive (Leigh, Nathans & Nievar, 2011). The mother had a more influential role in the virtual child’s language development as she would allow the child to explore the surrounding environment through daily walks and teach the child new words as they did. It was due to parental involvement and an encouraging, safe environment, the virtual child developed her language skills not only due to influence but to a desire to learn new