Preverbal development describes the period when infants communicate and learn about language before they speak their first words. This stage, from birth to around 12-18 months, is a foundational time for developing linguistic abilities. Infants actively absorb sounds, understand social cues, and practice the initial building blocks of language. These experiences and interactions lay the groundwork for later verbal proficiency.
The Preverbal Timeline
The journey of preverbal communication begins at birth with reflexive sounds, such as crying, which are automatic responses to discomfort or hunger. Around two to four months, infants start cooing, producing long vowel sounds like “oooo” or “aaaa,” often in response to a caregiver’s voice. This early vocalization signifies a growing awareness of sound and interaction.
As infants approach four to six months, their vocalizations expand into vocal play, where they experiment with different sounds, pitches, and volumes. This exploration often includes squeals, growls, and raspberries. By six to nine months, canonical babbling emerges, characterized by the repetition of consonant-vowel combinations, such as “ba-ba-ba” or “da-da-da,” marking a step towards speech-like sounds.
Methods of Preverbal Communication
Infants use various methods to communicate their needs and engage with their environment. Crying serves as a primary form of communication, with different cries often indicating distinct needs, such as a sharp, sudden cry for pain, or a rhythmic, repetitive cry for hunger. Caregivers often learn to differentiate these subtle variations over time.
Facial expressions convey a range of emotions and intentions, with infants using smiles to express joy and frowns or furrowed brows to show displeasure or confusion. Body language provides additional signals, such as arching the back or clenching fists when agitated, or relaxing their body when content. Eye contact and gaze following are non-verbal tools, allowing infants to direct attention and indicate interest in objects or people. Early gestures, like reaching arms out to be picked up or pointing to an object they desire, represent efforts to communicate and interact.
How Caregivers Can Encourage Communication
Caregivers play a role in fostering an infant’s language development by creating a rich communicative environment. Using “parentese,” a high-pitched, melodic, and exaggerated form of speech, helps capture an infant’s attention and makes speech sounds clearer and more engaging. Narrating daily activities, such as describing what is happening during a diaper change or mealtime, exposes infants to a wide range of vocabulary and sentence structures in context.
Reading books aloud, even to very young infants, introduces them to the rhythm and sounds of language and associates words with images. Singing songs further immerses infants in linguistic patterns and melodies. Engaging in responsive “conversations” is also beneficial; this involves imitating an infant’s babbles or sounds and then waiting for their response, creating a turn-taking dynamic that mirrors adult conversation. These interactions build a foundation for later verbal exchanges.
The Transition to First Words
The preverbal stage gradually transitions into verbal language as infants refine their vocalizations and begin to attach meaning to specific sounds. Around 9 to 12 months, babbling evolves into jargon babbling, which includes the intonation and rhythm of adult speech, even though the sounds themselves may not be recognizable words. This stage demonstrates an infant’s growing understanding of the melodic contours of their native language.
Following this, infants start to link specific sounds to concrete meanings, leading to their first true words. A true first word is a consistent sound or approximation an infant uses intentionally to refer to a specific person, object, or action, such as “mama” for their mother or “ball” when referring to a toy. This milestone marks the shift from preverbal communication to spoken language.