Stages of Speech and Language

Development
For more information contact:
The Speech & Language Therapists
Mary Fisher 0161 342 5415
Fran Thomas 0161 342 5413
Lesley Anne Wallace 0161 342 5429

Stages of Speech and Language Development

Up to 3 months
Listening & Attention

 Startled by loud noises

 Turns towards a familiar sound

Understanding

 Recognizes parent’s voice

 Often calmed by familiar friendly voice, e.g. parent’s

Speech Sounds & Talk

 Frequently cries especially when uncomfortable - Makes vocal sounds, e.g.

cooing, gurgling

Social Skills

 Gazes at faces and copies facial movement, e.g. sticking out tongue!
 Makes eye contact for fairly long periods

3 - 6 months
Listening & Attention

 Watches face when someone talks

Understanding

 Shows excitement at sound of approaching voices

Speech Sounds & Talk

 Makes vocal noises to get attention

 Makes sounds back when talked to
 Laughs during play
 Babbles to self

Social Skills

 Senses different emotions in parent’s voice and may respond differently, e.g.
smile, quieten, laugh
 Cries in different ways to express different needs

6 - 12 months
Listening & Attention

 Locates sources of voice with accuracy

 Focuses on different sounds, e.g. doorbell, clock

Understanding

 Understands frequently used words such as ’all gone’, ’no’

 Stops and looks when hears own name
 Understands simple instructions when supported by gestures and context

Speech Sounds & Talk

 Uses speech sounds (babbling) to communicate with adults; says sounds like
’ba-ba, no-no, go-go
 Stops babbling when hears familiar adult voice
 Uses gestures such as waving and pointing to help communicate

Social Skills

 Enjoys action rhymes and songs

  Tries to copy adult speech and lip movements
 Takes ‘ turns’ in conversation (using babble).

12 - 15 months
Listening & Attention

 Attends to music and singing

 Enjoys sound - making toys / objects

Understanding

 Understands single words in context, e.g. cup, milk, daddy

 Understands more words than they can say
 Understands simple instructions, e.g. ‘kiss mummy’, ‘stop’

Speech Sounds & Talk

 Says around 10 single words, although these may not be clear

 Reaches or points to something they want whilst making speech sounds

Social Skills

 Likes being with familiar adults

 Likes watching adults for short periods of time.

15 - 18 months
Listening & Attention

 Listens and responds to simple information / instructions e.g. ’Ben, put on

shoes’, ’Mohammed, give to daddy’

Understanding

 Understands a wide range of single words and some two-word phrases, e.g.
‘give me’, ‘shoe on’
 Recognises and points to objects/pictures in books if asked
 Gives names familiar objects to adults, e.g. coat, apple,

Speech Sounds & Talk

  Still babbles but uses at least 20 single words correctly, although may not be
clear
 Copies gestures and words from adults
 Constant babbling and single words used during play
 Uses intonation, pitch and changing volume when ‘talking’

Social Skills

 Simple pretend play, but plays alone

 Although becoming independent likes to be near familiar adult

18 - 2 years
Listening & Attention

 Focuses on an activity of their own choice but finds it difficult to be directed by

an adult
 Use of child’s name beginning to help them to attend to what an adult says, e.g.
‘Sarah, eat sandwiches’

Understanding

 Understanding of single words develops rapidly during this stage: anything

between 200—500 words are known
 Understands more simple instructions, ’Get your bricks’

Speech Sounds & Talk

 Uses up to 50 words
 Begins to put two or three words together
 Frequently asks questions, e.g. the names of people / objects
 Uses speech sounds p,b,m,w

Social Skills

 ‘Pretend’ play developing with toys, e.g. feeding a doll

 Becomes frustrated when unable to make self understood
 Follows adult body language e.g. pointing, gesture

2 - 3 years
Listening & Attention

 Beginning to listen to talk with interest, but easily distract.

 Listens to talk addressed to him/her, but finds it difficult if prompts are not
provided, e.g. use of name, stop and listen

Understanding

 Developing understanding of simple concepts including In / on / under , big /

little
 Understands phrases like ’put teddy in the box’
 Understands simple ’who’ and ‘what’ and ‘where’ questions but not why.
 Understands simple story when supported with pictures

Speech Sounds & Talk

 Uses 300 words including descriptive language

 Links four to five words together
 Uses pronouns (me, him, she) plurals & prepositions (in, on, under)
 Has problems with speech sounds: l / r / w / y , f / th, s / sh / ch / dz / j

Social Skills

 Holds a conversation but jumps from topic to topic

 Interested on other’s play and will join in
 Expresses emotions towards adults and peers using words, not just actions

3- 4 years
Listening & Attention

 Enjoys listening to stories

 Still finds it difficult to attend to more than one thing at a time, has to switch
attention between speaker and task

Understanding

 Understands questions or instructions with two parts, e.g. ‘get your jumper’
and ‘stand by the door’
 Understands ‘why’ questions
  Aware of time in relation to past, present and future, e.g. Today is sunny and
yesterday was rainy.

Speech Sounds & Talk

 Uses sentences of four to six words

 Uses future and past tense (ed)
 May continue to have problems with irregular words, ‘runned’ for ‘ran,
‘swimmed’ for ‘swam’
 Able to recall and enjoys telling long stories /singing songs
 Has problems saying r, j, ch and sh

Social Skills

 Understands turn-taking and sharing with adults / peers

4 - 5 years
Listening & Attention

 Attention is now more flexible -the child can understand spoken instructions
related to a task without stopping the activity to look at the speaker

Understanding

 Able to follow simple story without pictures

 Understands instructions containing sequencing words; ‘first...after….last’
 Understand adjectives: soft, hard, smooth, etc
 Aware of more complex humour, laughs at jokes

Speech Sounds

 Uses well formed sentences e.g. ‘I played with Ben at lunch & Talk time’ but
there may still be some grammatical errors
 Easily understood with only a few immaturities in sounds, e.g. ‘th’, ‘r’ & 3
consonant
 Frequently asks the meaning of unfamiliar words

Social Skills

 Chooses own friends and generally co-operative with peers

  Able to plan construction and make believe play activities

Theories of Speech & Language

Development
Researched by: Alexa
Objectives:
1. Understand each of the four theories of language development
2. How do clinicians apply the theories of language development?
3. Be familiar with the multicultural considerations of speech and language development
The process of speech and language development in infants and children is complex and interrelated. For
normal communication to develop, there must be an integration of anatomy and physiology of the speech
systems, neurological development, and interactions that encourage infants and children for
communication attempts. Language development includes both receptive and expressive language.
(Owens, 2012) There are four theories that explain most of speech and language
development: behavioral, nativistic, semantic-cognitive, and social-pragmatic.

Understanding the Theories

Behavioral Theory
The behavioral perspective states that language is a set of verbal behaviors learned through operant
conditioning. Operant conditioning is a method of changing behavior so that a desired behavior is
reinforced immediately after it occurs. B.F. Skinner is considered to be the father of the modern
behavioral theory. This theory can be applied to many aspects of human learning including speech and
language. The theory centers around the idea that children are conditioned by their environment and the
reinforcement of their communication.

Behaviorists believe that language behaviors are learned by imitation, reinforcement, and copying adult
language behaviors. They consider language to be determined not by experimentation or self-discovery,
but by selective reinforcements from speech and language models, usually parents or other family
members. Behaviorists focus on external forces that shape a child's language and see the child as a
reactor to these forces. (Hulit, Howard, & Fahey, 2011)

Imitation and Practice

Two other concepts that are important for understanding the behaviorist ideas of speech and language
development are imitation and practice. A young child will try to imitate sounds and words he hears his
parents say the best he can. When a child says a word that sounds close to what the parents say, they
accept and reinforce it. In other words, they begin shaping the word until the child can eventually say the
word as well as the parents do.

An example of selective reinforcement:

A child says "mama" when his mother starts to pick him up. The mother is delighted to hear the child say
this and gives the child a hug and kiss. The mother says "Mama, that's right, I'm Mama!" The mothers
affectionate response makes it more likely that the child will say "mama" again. The mother's response to
the child reinforced the behavior.

Nativistic Theory
The nativistic theory is a biologically-based theory which states that language is innate, physiologically
determined, and genetically transmitted. This means that a newborn baby is "pre-wired" for language
acquisition and a linguistic mechanism is activated by exposure to language. (Hulit, Howard, & Fahey,
2011). This theory believes that language is universal and unique to only humans and that unless there
are severe mental or physical limitations, or severe isolation and deprivation, humans will acquire
language. The nativistic theory argues that caregivers do not teach children the understanding of
language and do not usually provide feedback about the correctness of their utterances. (Pinker, 1984).

Language Acquisition Device

The main theorist associated with the nativist theory is Noam Chomsky. He came up with the idea of
the language acquisition device (LAD). The LAD is a language organ that is hard-wired into our brains at
birth. Once a child is exposed to language, the LAD activates. Click the button below to learn more about
Chomskey's ideas.

The Nativist Perspective

Semantic-Cognitive Theory
The semantic-cognitive theory is a perspective of language development that emphasizes the
interrelationship between language learning and cognition; that is, the meanings conveyed by a child's
productions. Children demonstrate certain cognitive abilities as a corresponding language behavior
emerges. (Bloom & Lahey, 1978). The semantic meaning that a person wants to communicate
determines the words and word order (syntactic form) the person uses. For example, children know what
they want to communicate (cognition) but do not always use the correct semantics or grammar. Also,
children may not know the correct use of a word or understand that a word can have more than one
meaning.

Social-Pragmatic Theory
The social-pragmatic theory considers communication as the basic function of language. This perspective
is first seen in infant-caregiver interactions in which the caregiver responds to an infant's sounds and
gestures.

The prerequisites for the social-pragmatic theory are:

1.) The infant must have a caregiver in close proximity to see, hear, or touch
2.) The caregiver must provide the infant with basic physical needs such as food, warmth, and exploring
the environment
3.) The infant must develop an attachment to the caregiver
4.) The infant and caregiver must be able to attend to the same objects or actions simultaneously
5.) The infant and caregiver engage in turn-taking in both verbal and nonverbal behaviors (McLaughlin,
2006).

In ideal parent-child communication, all of the five prerequisites are met in most interactions. The social-
pragmatic perspective emphasizes the importance of the communicative partner's role; the partner's
interpretation of what is said defines the results of the speech act.
How do Clinicians Apply These Theories?
Behavioral Theory

For decades, clinicians have used a behavioral approach to study children's language by observing,
describing, and counting specific language behaviors. This basic stimulus-response model first teacher
children to imitate a sound and then reinforces the sound production with verbal praise (e.g. "Great job!").
The children's sounds are shaped into increasingly closer approximations of the target sound, and when
they finally are able to produce the target sound correctly, the sound is practiced in a variety of word and
sound combinations.

Nativistic Theory
When children do not use certain language structures that are appropriate for their age, they most likely
have not acquired them naturally and would need to improve in therapy. Helping children learn how to
combine words, phrases, and sentences lets them convey messages to others. Instructing children about
how to use language appropriately in different social situations and environments allows them to use
appropriate pragmatics when communicating.

Semantic-Cognitive Theory
Clinicians use the semantic-cognitive theory by
describing children's strategies for gaining new
information. For example, the complexity of a
sentence, the amount of information in the
sentence, and the rate at which the sentence is
said may significantly affect the way a child
understands a sentence. A child with delayed or
disordered language could benefit from a clinician
who can adjust one or all of these variables. A
clinician may be able to make a sentence simpler
with less information for a child to process and
slow down the rate of speech so that the child
can better understand the message.

Social-Pragmatic Theory
them Caregivers can make language easier in many ways, including playing social games that are
stimulating and exciting for infants (e.g. peekaboo), taking turns in activities where the caregivers speaks
and expects the infant to respond in a similar way, and reading books with young children. Clinicians can
assess and treat a child's language impairments from a social-communicative and contextual perspective.
The goal of therapy is to maximize the child's ability to communicate.

Cultural and Linguistic Diversity Perspective

Although not necessarily considered a theory of language acquisition, clinicians need to be aware of
cultural and diversity perspectives. Regardless of the theory of language development that is followed,
children mature and grow within the context of their caregivers, whether they are parents, family
members, or other members of the community. These people provide an environment with
communication for the maturing child that reflects the range of meanings, values, perceptions, and beliefs
of the cultures they are a part of. The United States is considered multicultural, like many other countries.
Multicultural refers to a society that is characterized by a diversity of cultures, languages, traditions,
religions, and values, as well as socioeconomic classes, sexual orientations, and ability levels where,
ideally, individuals are respected and valued for their contributions to the society as a whole. Speech-
language pathologists and audiologists need to be able to understand and appreciate the cultural-
linguistic diversity of client populations in order to better serve them. (Owens, 2012)

Cultural diversity is not determined by a person's origin or color of skin, but by many other factors
including linguistic background, level of education, socioeconomic status, and religious beliefs. Any of
these factors could influence speech and language development. Many children in America are come
from families who have recently immigrated to America. These families often continue to speak their
native language at home and in social environments. This typically causes children to develop the family's
native language as their first language. However, many children may be exposed to both their native
language and English and will learn to speak English with an accent.

Dialects
There are approximately 1,000 languages in the world spoken by at least 10,000 people. (Crystal, 2010).
Languages have a variety of forms and dialects that can vary in phonology, vocabulary, and grammar.
Within a language, no dialect is better than another, however, standard dialect can be associated with
higher education levels and is used in education environments. Standard dialects for one language can
even vary from country to country. For example, America, England, Australia, New Zealand, and
Singapore all use English, but have very different dialects.

ASHA (1998) provided a statement about speech-language pathologists working in school settings who
have different dialects than the community. "ASHA maintains that members may not discriminate against
people who speak with a nonstandard dialect in educational programs, employment, or service delivery.
However, clinicians must have the necessary diagnostic and clinical skills and be able to model required
treatment targets. In addition, the clinician may not have limited English proficiency.