The previous article in this series considered the power of non-verbal communication. But spoken language is the gateway through which we enter a different world of knowledge and understanding.
It is through our words that we express our thoughts, feelings, hopes and ideas and learn about the thoughts, feelings and hopes of others - not only by what we actually say to one another, but through poetry, prose and song. Without words we would have no stories, no means of passing on our cultures and religions. We would have no books to tell us facts or to invite us into worlds of fantasy and imagination.
How we learn to speak
Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence regarding the importance of language is that areas of our brains are dedicated to language production, comprehension and its emotional expressiveness. Just think of the many ways to say 'no'! In addition, the face is where all these interesting sounds come from and, as we know, even newborn babies are interested in faces.
Putting these ideas together, we can see that from birth, facial expression, mouth movements and sounds all meet to provide the context for babies to become fascinated by vocal communication. Furthermore, babies are used to hearing the human voice in the womb, adding to this powerful 'cocktail' of experience whereby sound becomes an integral part of communication. The first 'conversation' may be the baby's earliest cry and the mother's soothing tones in response, and it is the sound of the words that first provide meaning for the child.
Motherese
Infant Directed Speech (IDS), or 'motherese', the manner in which mothers (and most adults) speak to babies, appears to be common to most cultures. Studies show that adults from different countries adopt a similar style of speaking to infants. Even lullabies appear to have similarities.
When we use IDS we speak in a higher pitch. We elongate the vowels, stretching them out, especially the 'aah's and oooh's'. We use short phrases and often repeat these several times, for example, 'Who's gorgeous, who's a gorgeous boy then, whoooo's gorgeous!' This is often accompanied by exaggerated facial expressions - just notice next time you talk to a baby!
The key point about IDS is that it is so musical, and it is this musicality that has interested researchers like Colwyn Trevarthen, who has spent years of study thinking about the importance of musical speech to babies.
There are several ways in which the instinctive use of IDS appears to support the development of language. The very intense sounds attract the baby to look at the carer, paying attention to the face.
The carer will begin to speak to the baby using all the exaggerated tones and pitch, but not in isolation - instinctively, a mother will adjust the pitch to adapt to the perceived mood of the child.
Just consider a baby who is looking sad. The mother may look at the baby with an exaggerated 'sad' expression, at the same time perhaps saying, 'oh, are you a sad little girl, what's the matter then, what's the matter, oh, oh', in a soft tone which probably goes a little deeper and then higher as the mother gradually soothes and comforts.
If the baby then starts to smile, again the mother will imitate and smile too. Her voice will rise in pitch and may speed up in tempo. Through her own use of language, facial and vocal expression, the mother shows the baby that its feelings are recognised and accepted. Then, if the baby begins to feel better, her voice will echo the changing mood.
As you can see from this example, the communication is increasingly associated with feelings and with meaning. Parents and carers, through their tone of voice, will express pleasure, annoyance, sadness, playfulness, and other feelings. Over time, these consistent rhythms will be organised into specific patterns of speech, which will in turn be linked to particular contexts, such as feeding, bath time or bed time.
What's also fascinating is that when a baby feeds, it does not feed 'all of a piece' but stops and starts again, often in a very rhythmic way - suck, suck, pause, suck, suck, pause. These brief intervals are often when mothers will smile, nod and speak to the baby, so through both these mechanisms the baby may be learning the rudiments of conversation 'turn-taking'.
Research does, in fact, suggest that babies like this style of talking very much, and prefer it to ordinary adult speech, even when they hear it in a language with which they are totally unfamiliar. They are also more responsive to the sound than to facial expression - which is logical, as they hear a sound before they sort out faces. Premature babies appear to be more soothed by IDS than they are by touch (Mithen, 2006). Even adults appear to be 'tuned in' to this kind of speech.
The musicality of motherese, with its variations in timbre, pitch, pacing, rhythm and duration, is mainly processed in the right hemisphere of the brain. This may also serve to 'prime' the speech centres in the left hemisphere as well. It is notable that it is the 'global' picture of speech that develops before the production of formed speech sounds - echoing the process of 'global before specific' that seems to emerge throughout development.
The speech patterns in IDS are also very pronounced. The short phrases mean that there are very clear beginnings and endings to what is being said. This helps babies understand about starting and stopping, and provide space for the baby to respond. Incidentally, nursery rhymes are also a wonderful way of communicating with babies in 'musical speech'.
Responses
Of course, while we adults are imitating babies' sounds and expressions, talking to them in this musical way, singing to them and playing, the babies are not just sitting there watching. They are obviously taking active part in these 'conversations'.
Not only do babies 'respond', but their different vocalisations appear to have a developmental progression. From birth, they make sounds, but it is often either a cry or, if not distressed, a general 'open-mouthed' type of sound. But once they have reached two or three months, many babies are doing a kind of 'goo goo' sound.
As they get older, these develop into noises that can seem like vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u) - which, of course, the babies are hearing in exaggerated ways. Babies may also begin to blow raspberries, squeal and even make a 'growly' noise.
By seven to ten months, many babies are beginning to babble. This marks a distinct change from all the cries, shrieks, yells, coos and 'fussing' sounds the baby has made as part of their 'conversation' up to this time. Babbling begins to take on a form that resembles adult speech, although there are no recognisable words in this tuneful stream, which varies in both pitch and tempo.
Locke (1995) draws attention to the fact that the production of babbling involves very different mouth, tongue and jaw movements. It is perhaps no coincidence that babies of this age are often beginning to eat food that has more lumps in it.
The mouth movements needed to cope with these new textures may link closely to those needed to produce the next step to spoken language. By about a year, babies are beginning to be able to produce consonant-type sounds like 'h, d, b, m, t, g, w, n, k' (Locke, p178).
It is noteworthy that also around this time, babies are beginning to point in order to draw their carer's attention to something of interest as well as to something they may want. This is the amazing beginning of the realisation that there are two minds with one object of interest. So the baby's communication skills are also widening, as they can invite other people to share their interest by pointing and vocalising.
Language development
It is important to remember that understanding meaning appears to be robust throughout our life span, but learning the grammar and accurate pronunciation of a language appears to be much more affected by the age at which we learn these aspects.
This means that there is an overall 'sensitive' period for language development - earlier rather than later. Some researchers such as Trevarthen et al (1999) describe a brain surge in the left hemisphere between two to five years, when there is often an 'explosion' in the child's vocabulary. It is also a time of great emotional, cognitive and physical change - for example, the emergence of pretend play, which often allows children to express themselves much more freely and extensively than in many other contexts. Hobson (1997) also notes research which points to a child's earliest use of personal pronouns such as 'I', 'you', 'me', 'mine' as beginning around two years.
A note about children with more than one language or for whom English is not their home language: if you are dealing with such children, you also need to be aware of the stage that the child has reached in speaking their own language at home as well as trying to support the child in the setting. While children may broadly follow the timescale outlined above, they will also still have their own individual rate of ability and types of language experience.
Another characteristic of children who may not speak English is that they might spend lots of their time simply watching and listening - just like babies, they are trying to make sense of the sounds in context. Offering repetition in games and consistency in some parts of the day will help the child begin to associate words and meaning.
Conversation
All in all, being able to speak to one another with understanding and feeling is a crucial part of the formation of human relationships. From the very beginning of life we are involved in a conversation with our parents/carers, a conversation which supports us in learning to carry out our own conversations and thereby developing our relationships in our childhood and adulthood. Without the experience of being spoken to, initially, we are going to miss out on the foundations for learning this essential part of human life.
I am going to end with an extensive quote which I feel summarises the importance of talking to children:
"When parents are unable to talk to their children, they cannot easily convey to them their values, beliefs, understandings or wisdom about how to cope with their experiences. They cannot teach them about the meaning of work, or about personal responsibility, or what it means to be a moral or ethical person in a world with too many choices and too few guideposts to follow ... Talk is a crucial link between parents and children: it is how parents impart their cultures to their children and enable them to become the kind of men and women they want them to be. When parents lose the means for socialising and influencing their children, rifts develop and families lose the intimacy that comes from shared beliefs and understandings." (Wong Fillmore, 1991, p343)
The simple message about learning to speak is to talk to your child!
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Hobson, P (1997 edition) Autism and the development of mind. East Sussex, Psychology Press
Locke, JL (1995) The Child's Path to Spoken Language. London, Harvard University Press
Mithen, S (2005) The Singing Neanderthals. London, Phoenix Books
Trevarthen, C (1999) 'Musicality and the Intrinsic Motive Pulse: Evidence from human psychobiology and infant communication', in Musicae Scientiae Special Issue 1999-2000, pp 155-215
Wong Fillmore, L (1991) 'When learning a second language means losing the first', in Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 6, pp323-346
DID YOU KNOW ...
Hunter-horticulturists in South America were asked to listen to recordings of English-speaking mothers while they soothed, showed approval, gave attention or asked their infants not to do something, using 'motherese'. They were also asked to listen to the same mothers, saying the same things but as if they were talking to an adult. The hunter-horticulturists had no problem in identifying the difference between infant-directed and adult-directed speech, and while they could recognise the intention of the speech (approval, etc) in both categories, they did it much more easily when it was spoken in motherese.
MILESTONES IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
A broad overview of language development
- 8 - 10 months: word comprehension
- 10 - 12 months: word production
- 16 - 20 months: vocabulary burst
- 18 - 20 months: word combinations
- 2 - 3 years: grammar
- 5 years plus: discourse organisation
Information collated by educational psychology colleagues.