As Speech Pathologists it is our role to study, assess and treat Language Delay and Disorder.
In doing so it is essential to appreciate the precursory development of the necessary skills to which normal language can be founded and then flourish.
These language precursors are the skills that babies usually acquire before they speak.
Language precursors develop from birth to between 18 and 24 months of age.
They are divided into three skills:
- Cognition
- Social/communicative development
- Sound production.
Cognition
Cognition refers to their thinking skills. For children at a “pre-language” level, thinking skills develop by
using, playing with and being stimulated by toys and other objects in their environment and through interaction with their parents and other care givers. Here are some important cognitive skills.
Object Permanence
Object permanence is knowing that something exists even though it’s out of sight. When your
baby looks down to find a dropped rattle, the baby is beginning to develop object permanence.
Soon the baby uncovers a toy that has been hidden under a blanket. In a more advanced stage of object
permanence, the baby will look in different places for a desired object. They have developed the important skill of expectation and permanence, which then develops into problem solving and early reasoning skills.
Means and Ends
With this skill, babies are able to use their bodies or other objects to get what
they want. When your baby reaches and grasps for your hair, the baby is showing early means/end
behaviours. Several months later, the baby may crawl across the room to get a toy. Toddlers climbing
on a chair to obtain chocolates that are out of reach are showing sophisticated means/ends behaviours.
Cause and Effect
By using this skill, babies use objects to create interesting sights and sounds. Babies show early cause/effect behaviours by shaking rattles or squeezing squeeze toys.
Other cause/effect behaviours include pushing down on a knob to make a toy operate, dialling a toy
telephone to make noise, or pushing away someone’s hand to avoid a spoonful of unwanted food. Advanced
cause/effect behaviours include winding the handle of a jack-in-the-box to make it work, or pressing the on button of the computer to boot it up.
Object Use
This skill involves children’s ability to manipulate objects. Babies initially mouth objects
as a way to explore them. They then use objects by looking at them, banging them together,
dropping them, or throwing them (as in the popular game “Go Fetch”). Eventually, babies will use
objects in socially appropriate ways. They will comb their hair with a comb, put on hats, try to put shoes on, or throw a ball back and forth.
Babies have learned a lot about the world once they have some progress in these areas. At this point their communicative intent or the need to express themselves with sounds and simple verbal expressions is developing rapidly. They want to talk about what they have learned, seen, played with or want to play with.
Social ~ Communicative Development
Children communicate to satisfy wants or needs, to control someone, to establish or maintain social
contacts, to express feelings, and to respond to their surroundings. Before they can talk, they
communicate with sounds, facial expressions, and gestures. Here are some of the skills – which are
present or start to develop at birth – they use to communicate.
Facial Expressions
Eye contact is an innate skill that is quite amazing to observe. It is not taught, but is ever present in the young infant. Even an infant that is in the pram passing by. They are not focused on your shoulder, or your left arm or your ear. It is an absolute lock onto your eyes.
Eye contact between babies and their caregivers is a very early way to communicate.
Smiling, which occurs a few months later, is an important response for developing interaction. Eventually, babies develop facial expressions to indicate when they are happy, sad, angry, disappointed, hurt and excited.
Sound
Crying is a newborn’s most powerful way to communicate. All new parents are acutely aware of this.
The early communicative `effort` of crying is reinforced as babies are hungry, fed, picked up, or changed.
Infants soon learn to make sounds when someone talks to them, when they see a familiar adult, or when they merely want attention. All parents have traversed this territory of, let cry or pick up, with varying amounts of success.
As they continue to develop, babies may make sounds when someone takes something away from
them, and then eventually to ask for something that is out of reach and that they need.
Sound and Word Development
Articulated speech depends upon precise oromotor movements of the tongue, palate, lips, jaw with coordinated breathing and voice production within the larynx. These skills develop as babies experiment with a variety of sounds. They soon learn to coo and use a small set of vowels, when someone picks them up to comfort them. They develop the skill of mimicking sounds presented to them from caring adults. They also laugh, yell and scream. As babies develop more control they produce and shape consonants, then well defined syllables, then babble and finally simplistic consonant-vowel-consonant word structure. Word combinations and simplistic sentences are then observed.
The observation and presence of these early stages of cognitive, social, communicative and sound development, ensures a firm foundation from which language can grow.
If you are concerned about your child’s speech and language development, please seek the opinion of an experienced Speech Pathologist. Early intervention improves outcome.
Mr Craig Gorman
Speech Pathologist.