DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS FROM BIRTH LAYS THE FOUNDATION FOR ALL OTHER DEVELOPMENTAL DOMAINS

The period from birth to 3 years old is very important for language development as it sets the foundation for future learning.1,2 Studies show that infants begin life with the ability to acquire and learn language. The newborn brain possesses the ability to perceive different speech sounds and produce communicative sounds.

Although infants do not begin babbling until 7-10 months and do not typically produce their first words until this age or later, research on infants has shown that they begin life with biological preferences that support the acquisition of language in general. They also possess the ability to begin to listen and develop understanding of what they hear from birth.1

The best time to lay the foundation for language development is therefore from infancy. Studies have also found that the period from birth to 5 years old is an important critical period in language development.3

Research has also shown that good language skills may lay the foundation for development in other domains. For example, a longitudinal study that followed children from 25 months till 8 years old showed that children with better spoken word recognition and vocabulary size at 25 months showed better performance in cognitive tests at 8 years old.3

There is also a very strong link between social emotional development, language development and cognitive ability. Children’s language ability lays the foundation for their cognitive and social-emotional development. This could have impact on their learning in all other domains.4,5 Conversely, studies have also found that children’s social-emotional development also impact also how they acquire language.6

Studies have found that children’s development in other domains progresses in tandem with their language development, coupled with secure relationships with caring adults who communicate with them.7

Many studies have consistently demonstrated that quantity and quality of talking, interacting, and reading with children in the first 3 years of life are strongly associated with language and cognitive development as well as school readiness and academic performance.8

A review of 103 studies by researchers, Zauche et al, showed that aspects of speech, including the quantity of words, lexical diversity, linguistic and syntactical complexity, intonation, and prosody, all contribute to the comprehension and production of language through enhancing speech processing, phonemic awareness, word segmentation, and knowledge of grammatical rules.

In addition to features of language, the delivery of language contributes to variance in developmental outcomes. Language delivered in the context of an adult–child interaction characterised by responsiveness and positive regard helps to scaffold children’s learning and encourage verbal behaviours as they develop.8

Words can be delivered in different ways in multiple contexts. Parents and caregivers can narrate their daily activities, point out various objects in their environment, ask their babies questions about how they are feeling, and share books, nursery rhymes and songs. All these activities are ways in which parents or caregivers increase the quantity of words in their children’s early language environment and thus enrich their learning potential.9,10

Other longitudinal studies have shown that helping children with language development in the early years impacts their learning capabilities in later years. For example, a ten-year longitudinal study carried out by the Juniper Gardens Children’s project in Kansas, USA, tracked children from 2 months till they were 10 years old. The study showed that infants who were exposed to a diverse vocabulary between 7 to 36 months of age did better on subsequent verbal ability, receptive and spoken language, and academic achievement assessed on standardised tests in kindergarten till they were 10 years old.11