How Child Comes to Language

By the end of their first year, most children pronounce their first words, and already by the end of their second year, they speak in short sentences. The fact that so many changes happen within such a short period of time is so fascinating that we tend to oversee the complexity of this process. Children master this process at different rates, therefore individual differences can be enormous. Our research in the Developmental Neurolinguistic Lab is focused on the analysis of longitudinal follow-up relations between different communicative and cognitive processes in development of healthy children, as well as in children with neurodevelopmental risk. One of our research goals is to describe developmental trajectories and to recognise important markers that will enable us to distinguish normal slower from impaired and delayed language development. This work will present a pattern of communicative and language development of a healthy boy L. who was thoroughly observed from his 8th to his 30th month of life. His acquisition of linguistic skills was slower than it would be expected for his age. During the observation, different assessment methods and measuring procedures were administered. Communicative pattern was analysed on the basis of interaction sessions videotaped in natural settings. Within the analysis, special emphasis was put on the emergence of gestures and the role of gestured communication in language development.