1. Language Development

2. Four Stages of Language Development
Stage Name
Years of Life
1.) Pre-Speech Stage
0 – 6 months
2.) Babbling Stage
6 – 8 months
3.) One-Word
(Holophrastic) Stage
9 – 18 months
4.) Combining Words
(Telegraphic) Stage
18 – 36 months

3. 1.) Pre-Speech Stage Crying and cooing
Highly responsive to pitch, intensity, and sound of language
Respond more enthusiastically to speech than other sounds
Microphone-nipple experiment

4. 2.) Babbling Stage Recognize their name
Recognize other words spoken w/ emotion (“Mommy” & “Daddy”)
Know many key consonant & vowel sounds
Make ba-ba & goo-goo sounds

5. Interesting Fact
At 6 months – If an infant hears either “mommy” or “daddy,” they will look toward the appropriate person.

6. 3.) One-Word (Holophrastic) Stage
Start to name familiar things
“Mama”, “doggie”, “car”
Develop symbolic gestures to…
Refer to objects
Request things
Describe objects
Reply to questions

7. 4.) Combining Words (Telegraphic) Stage
Two- or three-word combos
Omit articles (telegraphic)
Use two-word sentences to…
Locate things
Make demands
Describe events
Show possession
Ask questions
Language explosion

8. Language Explosion!
Once an infant’s vocabulary reaches ~50 words, it suddenly begins to build rapidly at a rate of 50 to 100+ words per month
Mostly nouns
Also called the “Naming Explosion”
Sue 

9. Talk to Your Babies!
The rate of children’s vocabulary development is influenced by the amount of talk they are exposed to.
The more speech that is addressed to a toddler, the more rapidly the toddler will learn new words!

10. Word Comprehension
Fast Mapping is the process of rapidly learning a new word simply from the contrastive use of a familiar word and an unfamiliar word
The children’s ability to connect new words to familiar words so rapidly that they cannot be considering all possible meaning for the new word

11. Example of Fast Mapping
In a preschool classroom, an experimenter drew a child’s attention to two blocks – asking the child to “get the celadon block not the blue one”
From this simple contrast, the child inferred that the name of the color of the requested object was “celadon”
After a single exposure to this novel word, about half the children showed some knowledge of it a week later by correctly picking the celadon color chip from a bunch of paint chips

12. Give Fast-Mapping a try…
Answer the following questions on your own.

13. Snurks are covered with garslim. Garslim is like __________?
This is a snurk. It walks on its flaxes. How many flaxes does a snurk have?
Snurks have twice as many flaxes as ampolinks. Where are the ampolinks?
Snurks are covered with garslim. Garslim is like __________?
Like dogs, snurks can wag their pangeers. Where is the pangeer?
Do you think snurks can bispooche? Why or why not?
This is an exercise in fast mapping. They have to complete the questions quickly without talking to anyone.
The first four questions should be easy to answer. The last question is designed to be impossible to answer without further information.
These questions put you back in toddlers shoes listening to adults speak. Like toddlers, you all must rely on context to comprehend the strange vocabulary to describe the snurk. In absence of adequate context, comprehension is impossible (as in question 5).