The Science of Babbling - Part.1

A major focus of many families’ memories is when their children said their first words and the excitement of what those words were (Mama? Dada? Cookie?). The lesser talked about phenomenon in our children’s development is babbling; the incredible process that made those first words come to be! The cute little coos’ and ‘goos’ and sighs that your baby makes are actually reflective of extremely important brain changes that are establishing the foundation for your little one’s first words. It is truly amazing and it all happens right before our eyes, and ears!

First words usually happen around 12 months of age but there is so much happening long before they are ever uttered. Here’s a timeline to walk you through babies’ speech development in the first 6 months!

Birth – 2 Months

Those first words? They typically happen sometime around 12 months of age. However, there is so much happening long before they are ever uttered. Let’s start from birth. In the first two months after birth your baby should cry and that crying should change in pitch. Although crying is not music to your ears, but it should change in pitch - like playing higher and lower notes on a piano – in your baby’s voice. Those pitch changes tell us that the brain is controlling the muscles of the neck and throat. Also, you should notice that your baby makes adorable sighs, grunts and even burps that are all signs that baby’s lungs, voice and mouth are working together as a whole with their brain. If you feel that your baby isn’t doing these things in the early days you need to let a nurse, pediatrician or speech-language pathologist know about your concerns. There’s lots that can be done to help address any problems – even this early on!

2-3 Months:

Thankfully, for your sleep schedule and peace of mind, the crying should be happening less often starting around the 2-3-month mark. Instead, you should notice that your baby is now starting to make many more vowel sounds. For children who have English as their first language, this is the time when you can actually start to hear “ee, i, e, oo,” and “ahs” much more often. You might even start to hear a mix of consonant and vowel sounds put together – the classic “coo” and “goo” sounds that everyone loves to hear their baby say. At the end of this stage your baby might have “mmmmm” sounds letting you know they are happy and content. This is all reflective of typical brain development and your baby laying down the building blocks for speech and language. Believe it or not, we’ve even done the research to know that when your baby is awake, alert and comfortable they will makes these types of sounds about 70 times in a 20-minute period.

4-6 Months:

When your baby is 4-6 months old you should begin to hear a speech-like quality in his/her babbles. The babbles should have syllables, just like grown-up words but without any real meaning yet – at least that we can understand! For example, your baby should produce consonant-vowel (CV) structured babbling over-and-over like “ba-ba-ba-ba” or “da-da-da” or “ga-ga-ga” consistently and it should have a musical tone to it that makes it sound like a real word. You should notice that your baby is using different vowel sounds – not just ‘a’ – like ‘bibi’ or ‘kookoo’ or ‘didi.’ All of this should happen a lot when your baby plays with toys and it should be accompanied by squeals and giggles and even growls! What looks like child’s play is really a fascinating window into your baby’s maturing brain. By the end of this stage, your baby should be copying you and playing fun turn-taking babbling games with you – especially during feeding, diaper changes, bath time and of course floor play. The science? Well, we know that when a parent or caregiver and baby coordinate their back and forth play that it encourages babbling! When you play tickle games or play with a rattle or toy, taking turns with your child and imitating each other, you are helping your baby’s brain to grow and to lay the building block to support his/her talking!

Hopefully I’ve captured your interest by shedding some light on the science of babbling! We’ve just covered the basic growth that happens from birth to 6 months – we’ve not even made it to the first words yet!

My next post will get into all the incredible things happening with your baby’s speech and language development from 6-12 months – finally getting to those remarkable first words!  

Also watch this space for parenting tips on how to support your baby in learning speech and language in these early stages.

References:

Franklin, B., Warlaumont, A. S., Messinger, D., Bene, E., Iyer, S. N., Lee, C. C., & Oller, D. K. (2014). Effects of parental interaction on infant vocalization rate, variability and vocal type. Language Learning and Development, 10(3), 279–296.

Mitchell, P. (1997). Prelinguistic vocal development: A clinical prim- er. Contemporary Issues in Communication Science and Disorders, 24, 87–92.