Posted: Oct 13, 2016 10:54 am
I'm currently reading an excellent book called "How Babies Think" (Alison Gopnik, 2001) that is basically an in depth literature review of pre-verbal cognition. There's an incredible amount going on in those little brains.
Baby sign language illustrates this perfectly. Babies can understand language and produce it via signing well before they're capable of saying their first word. My 7 month old can sign "milk" to let me know he's hungry, for example, but obviously he can't speak yet. The production of speech has as much to do with learning how to use your mouth and your vocal cords as it does actually processing and using a language.
The abstract relations thing made me laugh, my kid also signs "milk" when he's drinking his milk, eating his food and drinking water, but at no other point. He seems to think that "milk" is the category for everything he can eat or drink haha.
Baby sign language illustrates this perfectly. Babies can understand language and produce it via signing well before they're capable of saying their first word. My 7 month old can sign "milk" to let me know he's hungry, for example, but obviously he can't speak yet. The production of speech has as much to do with learning how to use your mouth and your vocal cords as it does actually processing and using a language.
The abstract relations thing made me laugh, my kid also signs "milk" when he's drinking his milk, eating his food and drinking water, but at no other point. He seems to think that "milk" is the category for everything he can eat or drink haha.