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Birth: Content (Semantics)
Content: From birth the infant is aware of sounds that are being made, they get startled when someone makes a loud noise. For example, mom drops a bowl and the infant will make a movement due to the noise. -
Birth: Pragmatics (Use)
A use/pragmatic milestone at Birth would be when the child attends to social partners. At this stage the child prefers infant-directed speech to adult-directed speech. Infant directed speech helps infants detect major syntactic units in speech through exaggerated pauses and highlights content words. -
Birth: Phonology
At birth, infants are able to distinguish between languages by their different rhythmic classes. For example, a child who is exposed to both Spanish and English will be able to distinguish between both languages when they are being used by the parent. Infants are also able to produce reflexive sounds. The reflexive sounds include sounds of discomfort and vegetative sounds. An example of sounds of discomfort are crying or fussing and examples of a vegetative sound are burps, coughs, and sneezes. -
2 months: Phonology
At 2 months, the infant is able to make baby-like sounds such as cooing and gooing. For example, a mom who is making her baby happy may get the infant to make those gooing sounds or when the parent is playing with the baby. -
6 Months: Pragmatic (Use)
A use/pragmatic milestone at 6 months is that the child engages in joint attention by attending to social partners by attempting to communicate with them intentionally. An example of this would be when an infant physically reacts to the emotional support, reactions, and actions of their communication partner. Such as an infant starting to wail and cry if a mother keeps an expressionless face as opposed to offering the usual smile while engaging with the baby. -
6 months: Phonology
. At 6 months, infants produce single-consonant vowels such as “ba” & “da”. They are also familiar with reduplicated babbling (ma ma). They are more comfortable with using stops and nasals. They are starting to familiarize themselves with adult-like speech but in babbling form -
6 months: Semantics (Content)
At 6 months, infants are able to make an attempt to imitate gestures and understand the word no. For example, if an adult smiles at an infant, the infant will smile back as a response to imitate. In addition, if the parent tells their infant “no” the infant will understand and stop. -
6 months: Pragmatics (Use)
At the age of 6 months, an infant will be aware of strangers and unfamiliar situations. For example, if two parents go out to eat for dinner, the waiter/waitress is recognized as a stranger almost immediately due to the fact that the infant has never been around them to recognize them as a familiar face. In addition to this new environment, the infant will make brief eye contact due to the unfamiliarity of the situation that they are in. -
8 Months: Content (Semantics)
At 8 months the child is aware and able to look for objects where they know it is placed. Also are wandering to find objects not in their sight. For example, the child is crawling in the living room and looking under the couch and finding toys. -
9 months: Phonology
Between 9-18 months, the infant is improving by the day or at least they should be at this point. They are starting to use diphthongs and have achieved something called jargon. With Jargon they are able to produce something like “mala”. They are babbling, but are close to producing their first word which would be at 12 months. -
10 Months: Pragmatics (Use)
A use/pragmatic milestone at 10 months old is when a child begins using “imperative pointing”. This means that the child is able to communicate their needs by pointing at an object when they want an adult to retrieve an object for them that is out of reach. An example would be when a child points at his sippy cup on the counter when they are wanting to take a drink from it. -
12 Months: Content (Semantics)
A content/semantic milestone at 12 months old the child says their first true word. A true word must follow a criteria in order to be considered a true word. The words must have a clear intention, recognizable pronunciation and “generalizes beyond the context to all the to all appropriate examples”. For example, the child says “doggie” they know and recognize what a dog is and looks like.