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Language Production in Infants and Toddlers

Language is a uniquely human activity. It allows us to communicate with each other, not just across the dinner table, but across time and space. Once a child begins to speak and master language, we begin to see fundamental changes in that child's behavior and in the behaviors of others toward the child. For example, emerging language skills can reduce the frequency of infant behaviors associated with frustration at being unable to communicate one's wants and needs to others. Researchers interested in language development generally study one particular area of language. For example, researchers may study spoken or written language, language production or comprehension, or one aspect of language (e.g., vocabulary, grammar). In addition, researchers may choose to study any of these topics at any stage of the life span. Because language development is such a broad topic, this entry focuses on spoken language production during infancy and toddlerhood, including individual differences in and parents' contributions to language development and methods of assessing children's language production.

The Groundwork for Language

Derivatively, the word infant means “without speech,” and typically the end of infancy is defined by developmental scientists as between 1 and 2 years of age, the approximate age by which most children begin to use words. Although we generally think of infants as being “prelinguistic,” the groundwork for language development is laid in infancy, and perhaps even before. For example, during the third trimester of pregnancy, the fetus hears sounds from the outside world. Chief among these sounds is the mother's voice. At birth, neonates show a preference for the mother's voice and for the language she speaks (DeCasper & Fifer, 1987). Thus, even at this early age, infants are becoming familiar with sounds that will become their native language.

Amazingly, children appear to learn their first language (for the most part) without being explicitly taught. It is up to the infant to decipher the stream of sounds heard coming from the parent and to parse this stream into smaller bits of phonemes, words, and sentences. It is still a mystery how infants accomplish this extraordinarily complex task. Although parents (knowingly or unknowingly) often attempt to make it easier for infants to learn language—for example, by speaking more slowly, in shorter phrases, and in higher pitches to infants—it is still primarily the infant's task to make sense out of what is heard.

Individual Differences

Much of the early research on children's language development focused on milestones such as the average age at which infants say their first words or utter their first two-word sentences. However, an important aspect of language development that is often overlooked is the range of individual differences among typically developing children. For example, small but consistent gender and birth order differences in children's language development have been found: Generally, girls learn to speak before, and they speak more than, boys (e.g., Bornstein & Haynes, 1998; Dale, Dionne, Eley, & Plomin, 2000; Fenson et al., 1994), and generally, firstborn children learn to speak before, and they speak more than, later-born children (e.g., Fenson et al., 1994). It is not clear whether the gender difference is the result of maturational or environmental influences; however, the fact that it has been found for girls and boys in a variety of countries speaking a variety of languages (e.g., Dutch, French, and Hebrew) suggests that maturational factors may be responsible. By contrast, birth order differences suggest that environmental factors are at play: Namely, firstborns, when compared with their younger siblings, may have greater exposure to a fluent adult model of language that, in turn, facilitates infants' language learning.

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