T. Romeflanders et C. Cronk, A LONGITUDINAL-STUDY OF INFANT VOCALIZATIONS DURING MOTHER-INFANT GAMES, Journal of child language, 22(2), 1995, pp. 259-274
This study explored the development of verbal behaviours of infants du
ring two mother-infant games. Twenty-five infants were videotaped as t
hey played peek-a-boo and ball with their mothers at 0;6, 0;9, 1;0, 1;
3, 1;6, and 2;0. The frequencies of eight categories of vocal/verbal b
ehaviours were analysed as they evolved over time in both games. Despi
te differences in the structure and level of difficulty of peek-a-boo
and ball, the development of these behaviours proved to be similar in
the two games. One category, PRIMITIVE VOCALIZATIONS, which did not ch
ange in frequency over time, was seen to have a pragmatic rather than
a linguistic function. Another category, PRELEXICAL COMMENT, demonstra
ted an early capacity for conveying topic and comment together in the
form of speech sounds combined with an attention-getting gesture well
before the emergence multiple-word utterances. The vocal behaviours pr
oduced during games were compared with the results of language tests a
dministered during the experimental sessions. Strong correlations were
found between the results of these two measures of language. The pred
ictive nature of vocal behaviours during games is discussed.