What factors contribute to the production of an infant's first words - Essay Example

? Factors Contributing to the Production of an Infant’s First Words Factors Contributing to the Production of an Infant’s First Words Introduction Whereas the ability of infants to speak their first words might seem general, there are fascinating important things about children’s speech. It is without denial that infants are totally unaware of their environment and speech and this nature of mental blankness creates the first difficulty for language acquisition. Secondly, the complexity of the concept of language acquisition by infants leads to an immense interest in how children develop their speech abilities. This continued interest has raised the number of research participation into child development speech. In this paper, the same concept of reviewing of available literature on the same issue is made, aimed at understanding the different factors that contribute to child speech development. In this light, different domains shall be examined such as the social context, psychological aspect, phonetics or word usage through syntax, neurological and normal comprehension. Social context The immediate social environment plays a crucial role in the abilities of infants being able to speak the first words. The ways in which this influence arises have been highly debated and partial consensus points towards word production environment (Oates, Wood, & Grayson, 2005). This narrows it down to the home environment. It is obvious that the home environment is highly challenging to infant development and has a great consequent effect on children or infant learning abilities. This learning is facilitated by occurrence of activities and therefore infants are most likely to make more meaning of words through associations of objects, activities or events happening around the home environment. Infants socialize within the home environment and are thus, highly likely to associate everything within it to some specific words. For instance, when infants start first by blubbing some words, they become challenged to either express their needs. Need theories point out that naturally, every instinct is a reaction to a need and expression of that need and is done through communication (Oates & Grayson, 2006). Thus, when babies or infants first learn a language, they do so in expression of their internal needs. In most of the times, the needs include hunger, pain, love for beautiful things and thirst among others. Thus, when a mother provides these things to an infant during the developmental stages, it is highly likely that the infant will fist blubber the word ‘mummy’, in its first attempt to speak. Need fulfillment and associated people highly motivate infants to learn and utter their first words (Oates & Grayson, 2006). Secondly, infants associate words either with events, objects, places and other things. Although this is true, this concept does not hold uniform. For instance, studies of various infants indicated differences of those infants uttering their first words. In one observation, an infant notes a picture on the wall and points towards the same, while uttering ‘there’ while the other one uttered something different. Maternal influence has also been identified as one of the strongest social context forces which influence the abilities of infants learning and speaking their first words. For instance, in one study carried out on word usage in mothers and infants, evidence pointed out that infant word usage was largely similar to those of their mothers (Oates & Grayson, 2006). This factor points out that those mothers are one of the greatest factors contributing to infants’ utterance of first speech. Comprehension Children start to learn the meaning of words through identification and association. Identification means that infants are able to identify a particular word and become familiar with that word or syllable (Derrington, 2008). The abilities for infants to comprehend specific words largely depend of the occurrence of either objects, situations or other circumstances that facilitate this. Therefore, the natural abilities of infants in word-comprehension are of paramount importance in word development. These abilities of word-comprehension by infants which are natural, play a very important and critical role when it comes to word development. Word development basically is very crucial to an infant who is in the process of learning how to pronounce things in his/her environment. The learning process in children is very critical, and requires serious attention and consideration by parents or guardians. Word boundaries and speech stream There is an interesting phenomenon in communication that is involved in syntactic use of words. Word usage is very vital in language learning and development. Correct word usage has a very powerful influence on speech development and recognition (Oates, Wood, & Grayson, 2005). Syntax experts have stressed on the important of word pronunciation, indicating stressing points in every word and therefore highlighting meaning to usage and understanding. For every word spoken, there are effects that arise from the mode of pronunciation. Different syllables are pronounced differently, with varying effects of stress on each, to clearly distinguish them and create appropriate meaning of the word. Given the nature of word-emptiness of children, creation of appropriate sounds is imperative in differentiating words as children develop (Derrington, 2008). This effect is highly crucial in child language development and consequently has great meanings in language development. Therefore, children associate words or understand words by distinguishing them from other words from a given speech stream by the effect of this influence. Correct and proper utterances of words create a favorable environment for child language development. Once children identify words through correct and proper pronunciation, then remembrance of the same is achieved and consequently that word becomes easily identifiable. At this state, word is fully comprehended (Hathaway, 2007). Recurrence of the word is further linked to consistence in events, actions or objects and when the word becomes repeated in future speech, then appropriate context is identified and then a word is produced. Genetic readiness and development of brain functions Brain studies in human brain have indicated that there are significant influences of the brain on human speech. At birth, it is speculated that both the right and the left hemispheres of the brain hold the same influence on speech development and cognitive abilities. The concept of equal potentiality has played a huge part in explanations of the ways human develop speech and consequently, has had huge influence in speech development for many years (PR Newswire, 2007). However, newer research aimed at differentiating them implies that the right side of the human brain, which is the right hemisphere, has faster speed of processing and storing words. Although the same studies have not drawn out distinction on the superiority or inferiority of the left hemisphere, it can be deductively concluded that it has a stronger impact and thus influence on speech development than the left (Hathaway, 2007). This implication only creates another belief that without proper function or normal right hemisphere, speech development will be impaired. This impairment will only lead to delayed utterances of the first word and thus negatively hinder speech development. Evidence of brain hemispherical influence on speech was attained through neurological studies. Studies of infants and children were carried out. Basically, children with lesion effects on either side of the brain were tested as well as children with healthy brains (Derrington, 2008). The results attested that children with lesion effects on either side of the brain had delayed language development and consequently led to the conclusion that brain hemispheres largely affect speech. In compliment, the studies found out that children with lesions on the right side were more negatively affected than those with lesions on the right. In adults, the studies indicated that a reverse of the situation would be evident. Further research has clarified that the two hemispheres are different in function (Derrington, 2008). Whereas the left handles information processing, the right largely deals with recognition and detection. Any effect on either would thus contribute to delayed utterances of first words. Individual variations or differences Psychologically, many developmental theories have empathized on the significance of individual differences on human aspects such as character or trait. These theories can be extended to the levels of infantry. Various research evidences have indicated that infants depict high levels of variations in their abilities of understanding and producing words. Most infants are thought to have developed a sense of understanding of some words at the age of at least 16 months since the day that the infants are born. The number of words that can be understood at this age depends on the individual differences mentioned above. For instance, in one such study, a number of infants were tested on their understanding and production of words. The results indicated that the natural ability for understanding words ranges from 100 to 300 words, while that of production at the same age ranges from 0 to 130 words (Oates, Wood, & Grayson, 2005). The lower limit indicates that even at that age, some infants may not be able to produce any word, despite their high understanding levels due to differences, which can either be attributed to the environment or simply the individual differences existing within them. Another difference indicated that different children have different abilities or interest and thus have differences in their vocabularies. While some children may naturally develop an interest in objects, other simply develop an interest in people. In the former case, a child may have numerous object names than the latter while the second child has more words associated with people than the first one. Other studies have indicated that it is only natural that girls develop more vocabularies in objects than boys at those tender ages (Hathaway, 2007). Conclusion From the discussion, it is evident that there are different factors that all collectively contribute to the abilities of infants in developing speech and uttering words. These factors vary from social to psychological, syntactic, neurological and environmental. Therefore, different children or infants face different influences from these factors. Psychologically, many developmental theories have empathized on the significance of individual differences on human aspects such as character or trait. In individual differences, most infants are thought to have developed a sense of understanding of some words at the age of at least 16 months. Phonetically, correct word usage has a very powerful influence on speech development and recognition. Syntax experts have stressed on the importance of word pronunciation, indicating stressing points in every word and therefore highlighting meaning to usage and understanding because for every word spoken, there are effects that arise from the mode of pronunciation. Neurologically, brain studies in human brain have indicated that there are significant influences of the brain on human speech. Evidence indicates that children with lesion effects on either side of the brain had delayed language development, and consequently led to the conclusion that brain hemispheres largely affect speech. References Derrington, A. (2008). When baby keeps mum: The nature of things: Genes may be responsible for a child's impaired speech development, says Andrew Derrington. Financial Times. Hathaway, S. (1997). Does my child have a speech problem? Library Journal, 122 (12), 117. Oates, J., & Grayson, A. (2006). Cognitive and language development in children. New York: Blackwell. Oates, J., Wood, C., & Grayson, A. (2005). Psychological development and early childhood. New York: Blackwell. PR Newswire. (2007). Speech, language and the brain: Neurodevelopment experts discuss critical links to child development. PR Newswire. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/444567087?accountid=45049. Read More