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Prespeech Vocalizations and the Emergence of Speech: A Study of 1005 Spanish Children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2013

Alexandra Karousou  and
Susana López-Ornat
Alexandra Karousou*
Affiliation:
Democritus University of Thrace (Greece)
Susana López-Ornat
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Alexandra Karousou, Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Preschool Education Sciences, Nea Chili, 68100 Alexandroupoli, Greece. Email: alexkarousou@gmail.com or akarouso@psed.duth.gr
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Abstract

This study investigates 12 prespeech vocal behaviors which are taken to reflect children´s phonological, communicative and early symbolic development. It explores their development (onset, duration and extinction) and their relation to early lexical development. A structured parental questionnaire on prespeech vocalizations was developed, validated and used for the evaluation of 1005 Spanish children’s early vocal development (8–30 months). In parallel, the same children’s productive vocabulary was assessed using the vocabulary section of the European-Spanish MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Results highlight a global inverted U-shaped developmental pattern which emerges from the asynchronous development of the vocal behaviors examined, relating both their emergence and extinction to advances in linguistic development. Moreover, the protracted coexistence of prespeech vocalizations with early speech and their significant correlations with vocabulary size reveal a gradual transition into language. Overall results reinforce and extend previous findings on the development of prespeech vocalizations and establish their relevance as early indexes of linguistic development. Finally, positive evidence on the use of an assisted parental report method for reliably evaluating these developments is provided. Results are discussed within theoretical frameworks that conceive language as the emergent product of complex developmental processes.

Keywords

Prelinguistic/preverbal communicationearly language developmentemergence of speechinfants and toddlersstandardized assessment
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 16 , 2013 , E32
Copyright
Copyright © Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2013 

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Footnotes

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, Spain [grant number CICYT-PETRI: PTR1995-0412-OP], the Universidad Complutense de Madrid [grant number GR58/08] and the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación [grant number SEJ2007-67810]. We are grateful to all the Spanish families and to various professionals of early development who collaborated in this study. Special thanks to Pamela Smith, an English friend, for her valuable help in avoiding linguistic and other errors. We also thank the anonymous reviewers of this paper for their useful comments and substantial suggestions.

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