A LONGITUDINAL-STUDY OF INFANT VOCALIZATIONS DURING MOTHER-INFANT GAMES

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.