How Babies Talk: The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life

Table of Contents:
Introduction. Setting the Stage: The Magic of Language Development in the First Three Years of LifeLanguage Milestones The Source of Our Knowledge: Scientific Sleuthing Theoretical breakthroughs Methodological breakthroughs Scientific Sleuthing Pays off Chapter 1. Watch Your Language! The Fetus Can Hear You: Development from Before Birth to Three Months of Age The Fetus The Fetal Environment: Home Sweet Home Baby, Do You Read Me? Hearing Mother's Voice and Other Sounds Try This: Can my fetus hear? Can my fetus hear me? Does Fetal Learning Mean Fetal School? Birthing the Baby: Will the Newborn Resemble the Fetus? Try this: Does the newborn react to sounds? Communicating Through Crying Mother, Is That You? Newborns Prefer to Hear Mother's Voice Distinguishing the World's Languages Try This: Does your baby respond to foreign languages? Face-to-Face: Love at First Look? Try This: Charting baby's smiles Do Mouths and Voices Work Together? Newborn Copycats Try This: Can my baby copy me? The Roots of Conversation Baby Talk Matters Try This: Do babies react to baby talk? More Than Meets the Eye Scientific Sleuthing Pays Off Lesson 1. Silence is not golden Lesson 2. New scientific methods can yield assessment tools Lesson 3. Overestimate your baby's capabilities Chapter 2. Yada-Yada-Yada: The Babbling Period Between Four and Eight Months of Age Babies Do Babble How Babies Talk to Us Try This: Conversations from the Crib? From Coos and Goos to Babbling Try This: Are "Mama" and "Dada" real words or just arbitrary sounds? Why Babies Babble How We Babble to Babies Widening the Topics of Conversation Try This: Finding objects near and far Finding the Words (and Other Units) in a Stream of Speech What's a Word Worth? Use Your Head! The Headturn Preference Procedure Try This: Will baby notice disrupted speech? Learn Your Handle: Lauren, Not Louise Try This: Does baby respond to her own name? Once Upon a Time: Babies Recognize Words in Stories How Do You Mean? Babies Grapple with Word Meanings Scientific Sleuthing Pays Off Lesson 1. Hear ye, hear ye: Watch for ear infections Lesson 2. There is nothing wrong with small talk Chapter 3. Point-ilism: Parents Become Tools for Babies between Nine and Twelve Months of Age Learning to Communicate without Words Finding the Causal Connection: My Signals Can Make Things Happen! Try This: Can my baby communicate with intention? How Do Babies Learn to Make Their Point? Try This: When can baby follow a point? The Negotiation of Failed Messages: You Just Don't Get It! Try This: How does my baby negotiate? Let the Words Begin! Preverbal Communication: The Cradle of Meaning Detecting the Patterns in the Language Stream The Decline in Distinguishing Among the Sounds of the World's Languages Whither the Words? Try This: Playing games Scientific Sleuthing Pays Off Lesson 1. Honor babies' communicative attempts even before they are intentionally communicative Lesson 2. Put my thoughts into words! Chapter 4. First Words: Getting "Hi" between Twelve and Eighteen Months of Age What Does It Take to Learn a Word? The Flowering of Vocabulary The Stars and Stripes and Other Symbols Try This: Comics in the crib? The Fertile Path to Real Words Try This: Creating a diary of protowords and first words Communicating Efficiently Try This: Tracking the use of baby's first ten words "Home Signs" and "Baby Signs" Try This: Can my baby learn some baby signs? Symbols, Categories, Meanings, and Emotions "Dog," Not "Dalmatian"; "Hat," Not "Baseball Cap": Why Babies Prefer Some Words over Others Try This: What kinds of words are my baby's first ten words? How Do Meanings and Words Come Together? Saying Your First Words: A Sobering Task Try This: Does my baby express emotion when she talks? First Words Take Effort, More for Some Than Others A Tale of Two Toddlers Name Callers and Social Sophisticates Try This: Is my baby a name caller or a socialite? What kind of parent am I? Word Comprehension Exceeds Word Production Scientific Sleuthing Pays Off Lesson 1. More baby talk=More baby's talk Lesson 2. There are big individual differences in the appearance of the first words Lesson 3. Picture book reading is a source of new words Lesson 4. When do you worry about a lack of words? Chapter 5. Vocabulary Takes Wing: Eighteen to Twenty-Four Months The Vocabulary Spurt Finding the Vocabulary Spurt Try This: Catching the torrent of words in a diary Word Leaning Is a Bear (Bare?) What Are Toddlers Talking About? Try This: Book reading as a classroom for word learning Babies Overextend Themselves: Misapplying Words for All the Right Reasons Try This: Looking for overextensions Does Sensitivity to Social Cues Lead to the Vocabulary Spurt? Try This: Is your child using social cues to learn new words? Do Mental Advances Lead to the Vocabulary Spurt? Try This: Categorizing obejcts and the vocabulary spurt Fast Mapping: Novel Names Go with Novel Categories Try This: Fast mapping and the vocabulary spurt An Integrated View of the Vocabulary Spurt: It Takes Social and Mental Advances Individual Differences in Word Learning Pronunciation: Saying It My Way Try This: Recording the baby's favorite mistakes Boys and Girls: Early Sightings of Mars and Venus Firstborn Versus Later-Born Toddlers Social Class Differences in Word Learning Scientific Sleuthing Pays Off Lesson 1. The study of normal development helps in understanding language problems Lesson 2. More language in=More language out Lesson 3. Watching TV cannot make up for real comunication Chapter 6. "More Juice!" - Babies Understand and Produce Simple Sentences Between Eighteen and Twenty-four Months of Age What Toddlers Can Say Two-Word Sentences Say It All Try This: Two-word sentences take off! But what do they mean? What Enables the Baby to Use Two-word Speech? What Toddlers Can Understand Investigating Two-Word Productions: What Children Comprehend Try This: What are the cues my baby relies on to understand sentences? What Does It Mean to Understand Sentences? Babies find the units in the language stream Babies realize that words in sentences describe events in the world Try This: Can my baby understand that language maps to unique events? Different arrangements of the units in sentences change sentence meaning Try This: Does my baby understand that differences in word order signal differences in meaning? Beyond Word Order: Children Attend to Grammatical Elements Try This: Is my baby sensitive to grammatical elements? "With" - A Grammatical Element in Action Comprehension Far Outpaces Production, But Why? Scientific Sleuthing Pays Off Lesson 1. Engage in rich interpretation but don't bother to correct Lesson 2. Your baby's caregiver is your ally Chapter 7. The Language Sophisticate at Twenty-four to Thirty-six Months: Why? Why? Why? The Emergence of Grammatical Capability Adding Glue to the Sentence: Function Words and Particles Try This: Finding grammatical function words and particles in your child's speech Overgeneralizations: It Breaked! Asking Questions What's Up, Doc? Wh-Questions Why, Why, Why? Ifs, Ands, and Buts: The Grammatical Spurt Is It Really Grammar? The Source of Grammatical Capability in the Human Species Where Does the Grammar Come From? A Language Instinct? The Critical Period: Time Is Running Out Scientific Sleuthing Pays Off Lesson 1. When should you worry? Lesson 2. What should be do or not do to promote language growth? Lesson 3. It's never too early to start learning a second language Chapter 8. "Please" and "Thank You": Using Language to Get Things Done Between Twenty-four and Thirty-six Months Mastering the Uses of Language Learning a Language Is Learning a Culture What Are You Really Asking? How Toddlers Understand Requests Try This: How do I ask questions? Does my child make conventional inferences? How To Ask: Getting What We Want Try This: Can my child consciously use polite speech? Learning Social Routines Conversations with Two-Year-Olds Try This: Can my child observe conversational rules? Beyond Conversation: Telling the Stories of Our Lives Through Narratives Try This: Does my child tell coherent narratives? Using Language for Fun: Jokes and Pretense Try This: Does my toddler make jokes? Scientific Sleuthing Pays Off Lesson 1. Constructing life stories with your child promotes narrative development Lesson 2. There's more to storybooks than meets the eye Epilogue. Tying It Up: Language Development from Birth to Age Three How Far Have Children Gone? Where Is the Child Going? References Index

About the Author :
Roberta M. Golinkoff, Ph.D., is a professor in the departments of Educational Studies, Psychology, and Linguistics at the University of Delaware, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She lives in Newark, Delaware. Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek is the Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Faculty Fellow in the Department of Psychology at Temple University and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Her research examines the development of early language and literacy as well as the role of play in learning. With her long-term collaborator, Roberta Golinkoff, she is author of 14 books and hundreds of publications, she is the recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Bronfenbrenner Award, the American Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Service to Psychological Science, the Association for Psychological Science James McKeen Cattell Award, the Society for Research in Child Development, Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Child Development Award and the APA Distinguished Lecturer Award. Her book Becoming Brilliant: What the Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children was a New York Times bestseller.

Review :
“This is a great book. It’s an important addition to any parent’s library.”—T. Berry Brazelton “An in-depth study of language development during the first three years of life… The text is interspersed with activities readers can use to assess the specific development of their own children... useful and interesting to anyone involved with young children.”—Library Journal “Crisp, clear, concise, often humorous. The contents are unusually substantive for a handbook targeted to parents, as the bibliography of scientific citations confirms. Important scientific results and their applications to daily life are highlighted as lessons under the heading ‘Scientific Sleuthing Pays Off’ and modified for use at home as ‘Try This’ exercises. A key resource for parenting collections.”—Booklist