Investagating Child speech development
...s stage is by reflexive crying. ‘The initial birth cry is probably reflexive in nature’(Cunningham,1990) However by the age of one month, three different cries expressing three different emotions have developed. (hunger, pain and anger) . These cries can be seen as clever primitive instincts used by the infant in order to survive in a very different world to which they are accustomed inside the womb. However, the fact that these different cries develop over the space of a month begs the question as to whether they are biologically programmed or indeed learned by the infant. The crying at this stage seems to be reflexive and showing little voluntary interaction with the world which would suggest that it is a biologically programmed instinct. The second stage of child speech development typically occurs after the child has reached around a month old and continues to the age of about three months. However contrary to the studies of Piaget there are no hard and fast rules as to when it occurs. ‘Cooing’ is ‘a vowel language consisting of single syllable vowel sounds, occasionally with soft constanants like m and n. This stage lasts until about the third or fourth month’(Cunningham,1990) The child used in our study of ‘cooing’ was eleven week old Grace. By the age of around four to five weeks the infant had begun to make the vowel- like sounds such as ‘oooh’. By week nine the infant had began to make more high pitched squealing noises. This can be seen on the video recording of the child(See appendix 1). The noise at this stage seemed to be more of a loud ‘aaaah’ and ‘Aaahh yaaaah’ Grace uses these noises typically to express feelings of happiness as they are usually accompanied by a smile but are sometimes used to show anger. In this situation it is sometimes followed by a cry. In most situations the child makes ‘cooing’ noises in response to audio and visual stimuli which is usually more effective if the parents provide this stimulus. Thus providing evidence that the baby learns speech development from the environment around them as they are most accustomed to those that live with them i.e. the parents as they and are more likely to interact with them. According to Cunningham the behaviour of normal adults in normal conversation (where one person speaks whilst another listens) is mirrored in the way that we speek to infants, even in a child as young as Grace. By asking questions and waiting for a reply from the infant it can be seen that social interaction has started to begin. (see Appendix 1) This is known as mutual monitoring ‘Basically infants monitor the actions of the mouth and the face , along with the movement of the hands so they can see what is going on with the caretaker or the person who is talking to them .Likewise the adults monitor the infant for non verbal cues about language and attempts to speak.’ (Cunningham,1990) Throughout all of the development stages the parent often uses ‘Motherese’ which is a language technique to help the child to understand what is being said by simplifying the speech. ‘Motherese’ comes in a variety of forms. One of the best examples is perhaps the use of words such as ‘dadda’ and ‘mamma’. Words uttered by the child are often also repeated as a way of reinforcing what the child has learnt. This relates strongly to the learning theory of child speech development, assuming that it is the help of the parents and the environment, which helps the speech to advance. Babbling occurs usually from the age of four months and is the putting together of vowels and hard constanant sounds. It is unclear whether the sounds uttered by the infant are simply random noises in order to entertain themselves or a real attempt to communicate. ‘Babbling may serve as a self-stimulation function or to improve the ability to understand more language or simply provide practice for the infant’ Babbling is seen to have a social function as it increases with the presence of other people. (Cunningham,1990) Babbling also takes place often when the infant is in bed. This could be seen to be that the infant is mimicking what they have learnt during the day and rehearsing it in order to use in conversation. This idea is known as the LAD approach. The Language acquisition device approach was presented by Noam Chomsky. It is the idea that there is a part of the brain known as the Language acquisition device which is turned on shortly after birth. It is the switching on of this device that allows the child to babble independently without stimulus as it is a way of practicing what they have learned. ‘According to the LAD approach, the best way for a child to gain ...