Language Emergence in Infants

Abstract

The early stage of child development (0-12 months) was investigated in this study. The kernel of language ability was traced within the frame of the system of psychophysiological development. It was shown that in the process of general development several mechanisms are successively put into operation and function in the different spheres of the infant's psychophysiological activity: body movement, contact with adults (an early form of communication), and vocalization (which is regarded as the preverbal form of the future language). On these grounds, and based on the existence of a special mechanism of inborn vocal activity normally presented by the moment of child birth, a framework of communicative operations with ambient people has been developed. The proposed model explains the advantage of using sound communicative forms, namely the infant's first words.

Selecting Books for Children Birth Through Four: A Developmental Approach

“…About 1-year of age, children will be saying their first words. But throughout this year, children will mimic the intonation of their native language in long strings of prosodic babbling, while others seem to babble more short sequences that sound like words (Ushakova 2000).…”

Modern approaches to the development of relevant competencies in the socio-cultural environment

“…Academician T. N. Ushakova gives models of speech and language development of both a child and an adult. The «model of the speechlinguistic functioning of an adult» given by her [Ushakova, 2000] turned out to be useful for determining the features of both mono-and bi-, multilingual development. In the theoretical constructions of speech and language bilingual development of an adult student systemic researchers may and did rely on this theoretical foundation.…”

“…T. N. Ushakova writes that «... the network structure is fundamentally important in organizing the semantic processes of speech. Namely: it is possible that the semantics of a word in a self-organizing speech flow manifests itself depending on which semantic field (node) of the «verbal network» the given word is in» [Ushakova, 2000]. To this we can add: «A possible mechanism of spontaneous verbalization is that a wordless image generates fragmentary phrases that carry semantic associations inspired by the original image-sprout.…”

Rumo às primeiras palavras: o enquadre na terapia fonoaudiológica do bebê com deficiência auditiva

“…Winnicott 8 comenta que os profissionais que lidam com mães e seus bebês podem precisar interferir no relacionamento entre eles para lidar com certas anormalidades físicas da criança; para isso, deveriam conhecer a realidade na qual estão os esquemas de ação do sujeito, sem que este, por sua vez, utilize-os diretamente 6,22 .…”

“…A brincadeira precisa ser passível de assimilação pela criança, pois é dessa forma que despertará o seu interesse. O interesse muda à medida que a inteligência progride, ou seja, para que haja compatibilidade entre o nível de desenvolvimento e uma brincadeira, esta deve acompanhar o ritmo evolutivo da criança 22 . Assimilar uma nova brincadeira significa, nessa perspectiva, modificar esquemas para poder integrá-los; se os esquemas não estão preparados para uma nova situação, a criança desistirá da brincadeira oferecida.…”