Language Development in Infancy

The chapter reviews recent empirical findings on early language development in typically developing children from prenatal experience to the toddler years. We first discuss prevalent topics in language acquisition such as critical period(s) and perceptual narrowing and then review experimental results about language growth in different areas of language, such as phoneme perception, word learning, and the beginnings of grammar. Our knowledge in these areas is rapidly growing thanks to recent advances in neuroscientific techniques that are now available to study young infants and even fetuses. We summarize results of studies using these techniques with anchoring them in behavioral research and general theories of language development. As the review reveals, previous concepts of language development, such as the sequential view whereby infants first learn sounds, then words and then grammar, need to be revised in favor of a more integrative view emphasizing the mutual relationships between different aspects of language.