Language in the first year of life : the pre-linguistic stage
It is important for parents to be clear about what to expect and observe in their baby's language development during the first year of life. Although the baby does not express himself verbally, he does communicate through crying, signs and other sounds and it is important to identify how he does it. Many parents expect the child to talk early and are anxious if they don't; others don't give this aspect the importance it deserves and when they seek help, treatment is more difficult. This is why the following article is intended to give you some guidance on the subject.
The development of language involves several skills or abilities of the child: the first is the cognitive area, since it is in the cerebral cortex where information is received, processed and elaborated and from where diverse processes such as attention, memory and concentration begin. The social-affective area because language implies communicating with other people. Hearing, because proper auditory perception is the basis for understanding language. The motor area, because the phonoarticulating structures must function in an adequate way to achieve the correct articulation of sounds and the adequate verbal expression.
Likewise, in the development of language, two major phases or stages can be distinguished: the pre-linguistic stage and the linguistic stage.
The prelinguistic stage runs from birth to twelve months, when the first words usually appear. At this stage there are several important events that parents must recognize.
From birth, the baby communicates through crying, thus indicating that there is something they do not like, that they are hungry, that they are sleepy and the response of their parents to that crying will provide security later to transtimir their needs and emotions.
Towards the second and third month of life there is the appearance of chirping which are guttural sounds, at the end of the throat as "agu", "ago" and certain cries with which they discover their own voice and experiment with it.
Between the fifth and sixth month, reduplicative babbling occurs, characterized by a combination of vowel and consonant sounds characterized by sounds of maximum articulatory opposition using an occlusive sound such as the P and an open vowel such as the A. This is characterized by a combination of vowel and consonant sounds characterized by sounds of maximum articulatory opposition using an occlusive sound such as the P and an open vowel such as the A. It is for this reason that you hear your baby repeatedly articulating syllables such as ta- ta- ta or pa-pa . ( no, the baby is not saying daddy !)
Generally between the eighth and twelfth month the baby begins to use gestures to show or point to objects of interest, say goodbye with the hand, and so on.
Finally, after the ninth month, phonetically stable sounds appear and are sounds that are already related to the sounds of adult speech.
Whenever your baby makes these sounds, you should respond. The child discovers that his emissions produce an effect on people, especially his parents, if he is stimulated to repeat them again, the development of this stage is favoured for the strengthening of his future language.
These apparently unimportant exchanges constitute the essence of human communication, the origin of the first dialogues. As I remind parents who come to my office. Children do not receive classes to learn to speak in the first months of life. Your father or mother doesn't sit around teaching you sounds one by one or grammar rules to form sentences. They only receive stimuli from the environment (obviously if the rest of their cognitive and auditory development is adequate) and this is enough so that in 12 months the child is ready to say his first words,
Remember that the best way to stimulate your child's language is your own voice.