Normal Language and Cognitive Development
Language is a set of shared rules that allow people to express their ideas in a meaningful way. Language may be expressed verbally or by writing, signing, or making other gestures, such as eye blinking or mouth movements. Speech is talking, which is one way to express language. It involves the precisely coordinated muscle actions of the tongue, lips, jaw, and vocal tract to produce the recognizable sounds that make up language. Speech and language functions are important components in children’s development. Children’s ability to talk and communicate with their parents and friends influences their social adaptation (Rosselli et al., 2014).
Communication is the key element necessary for interaction
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Auditory stimulation plays an important role in language development. Normal hearing is crucial for the development of appropriate communication skills. The first 18 months of life are particularly critical because during this period the spoken language emerges. Crucial milestones must be achieved, and development must progress in an orderly fashion to promote the full range of language. The infant responds to speech sounds selectively. A newborn responds to maternal speech, demonstrating a preference for the mother’s voice (Haubrich, 1998).
In addition, there is also a preference for the native language, even at birth. Early research demonstrated that infant movement occurs synchronously in response to speech structure. The infant not only responds to auditory stimulation but also can control auditory events in the environment. The infant’s ability to indicate preferred sounds, such as the mother’s voice or musical selections, by sucking on a specially designed pacifier, may demonstrate early linguistic abilities (Kuhl, 2010).
Early language development is characterized by various stages that most children exhibit, although the age at which these stages appear varies widely (Babble, imitation, understanding words, first words,
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Sensorimotor (0 to 2 years of life).
2. Preoperational (age 2 to 7 years).
3. Concrete operations (age 7 to 11 years).
4. Formal operations (adolescence) (Feldman, 2004).
Factors that Influence Cognitive Behavior:
1. Maturation of the nervous system.
2. Experience.
3. Social transmission of information or teaching.
4. Equilibration (innate tendency for mental growth to progress toward increasingly complex and stable levels of organization).
5. Breastfeeding is associated with improved cognitive development, particularly in children born preterm (Quigley et al., 2012).
Cognition Landmarks at 1-3 years:
• Tertiary circular reaction develops through which a child produces new events for his/her own sake by extending existing habits to a variety of objects.
• By l8 months, a toddler can recognize himself/herself in mirrors and pictures (Kesselring, 2009).
Table (3): Cognitive development (Angeline et al., 2013).
Cognitive development
Age Activity
One month Watches person when spoken to.
Two months Smiles at familiar person talking. Begins to follow moving person with eyes.
Four months Shows interest in bottle, breast, familiar toy, or new
Based on the Standards for the Development Profiles, Isla appears to be right on tract for the development of communication and language for a twelve-month-old infant. Isla knows when she is being interacted with and responds with movement, eye contact, and gestures. Isla knows her name and responds by looking in the direction of the adult who called her name. Isla also reacts to the words ‘no’ or ‘stop’. While observing, Isla was walking with assistance from the furniture, and Isla became to close to a shape corner of a table.
What is the evidence that early childhood is a sensitive time for learning language? Social interaction, myelination, brain maturation, and scaffolding are evidence that early childhood is a sensitive time for learning language. In addition, children in early childhood are considered “language sponges” because they absorb every bit of language they hear or read. How does fast-mapping aid the language explosion?
Some of my babies communicate by creating sounds and
You brought up an interesting topic that I usually find very fasinating. As you mention, some people belie baby talk delays baby development and Anne Fernald suggest talk to babies in a high pitch tone. My question, if babies, could hear and learned from the womb doesn’t tone of our voice truly matter? Studies of newborn behavior show that babies get used to the music and voices they 've heard in the womb. When your baby is born, if he hears sounds he 's heard before birth, he/he may respond by appearing more alert and active.
A neonate’s auditory perception is equipped twenty-four weeks before it is full term and ready for delivery, which shows that once born its auditory perception should be strong. Although while in womb, sound waves have to travel through multiple layers of tissue and fluid of the mother before even reaching the baby, once the baby is born the sound is no longer muted. This can be very intense and sometimes even painful for the baby, however auditory perception is important and necessary for communication skills. In the article, “The Importance of Rapid Auditory Processing Abilities to Early Language Development: Evidence from Converging Methodologies” shows that, One of the skills critical to the acquisition of language is the ability to process and categorize brief, rapidly changing auditory stimuli according within tens of milliseconds. These acoustic temporospectral cues are critically important for identifying and distinguishing formant transitions within speech, and are discriminated by infants well before speech is produced (Benasich et al.,
The experiment has demonstrated that the infants already begins with the basic building blocks of social cognition. Infants will display several forms of social interactions which includes yawning, smiles, laughing, and glances at the mother. The infant may
Cognitive abilities enable children to process the sensory information that they collect from the environment. According to Wood, Smith and Grossniklaus (2012), Piaget defined cognitive development as the progressive reorganization of the mental processes that results in biological experience and maturation. As numerous researchers have explained, children normally undergo many changes from birth to adolescents, most of them being growth related. According to Cook (2005), the changes in thinking is what researchers call cognitive development. In toddlers, cognitive development is observed through the early use of tools and objects, the child’s behavior when objects are moved in front of them and their understanding when objects and when people are in their environment.
INTRODUCTION Literature Review Much similarity have been found between music and language development. Studies have found that the roots of music and language are indistinguishable, and early perception of sound, the first crucial aspect, involves common processes. Infant’s early vocalization shares both musical and linguistic characteristics. Melodic utterances, due to the environment, only starts occurring from 9-18 months. (Chen-Hafteck, 1997)
Cognitive theory, Jean Piaget is one of the famous cognitive theorist recognized that babies are always curious and observant. Piagent stated “Cognitive development occurs in four major age-related periods, or stages:sensorimotor, prepositional, concrete operational and formal operational.” (Berger, pg29). Humans thoughts have an impact on their emotions and actions. Human usually combined all their
Specifically, this research wants to find out if social contingency offer opportunities for infants to learn vocalization and if infants can learn from caregiver’s reactions to their sounds.
It has also been found that it helps increase the verbal development. This article tells us how infants around 6 months can learn more words in sign language than spoken words up to 18 months. Babies understand more than what the parents probably realize. Infants as young as 6 months old can identify objects such as, apple, banana, or the location of the arm on a picture of the body.
The first year of a child’s life is spent communicating entirely through nonverbal means. Infants use every part of their bodies to convey their wants and needs as their parents and early childhood educators respond to meet them. Examples of this are reflexes, such as opening their mouths when hungry. Also, crying and whole body movements to demonstrate feelings. Another way that is interesting in infant nonverbal communication is allowing infants to play with each other.
Recognizes names of familiar people, objects, body parts. Says many single words(by 15-18 months) Use 2-4 words sentences (by 18-24 months) Separation anxiety increases. Begins to sort objects by shapes and colors.
Environmental factors tend to modify the inputs received by the sensory pathway. The developing brain is most vulnerable to these alterations and interacts with the environment to modify its neural circuitry. In addition to other sensory stimuli, auditory stimulation can also act as external stimuli to provide enrichment during the perinatal period. There is evidence that suggests that enriched environment in the form of auditory stimulation can play a substantial role in modulating plasticity during the prenatal period.
This statement indicates that, an infant discover the language through sounds he heard. This sounds, as the infant grows, will develop into chunk of sounds and later on will expand into understandable words. Their development of language will