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Foreword L anguage is an important and virtually inevitable part of a child’s development . Communication with important adults is built in at birth, as a way of being sure to be taken care of. Right after birth, a baby communicates. He is born with six different cries: hunger, pain, boredom, fatigue, discomfort, and a cry that accompanies letting off steam at the end of the day. These cries attempt to draw an important person to him and get that person to meet his needs. They are a baby’s first language—a language that his parents will learn from him in his first three weeks of life. A baby’s sucking pattern is also designed to draw out parental responses. From birth, he starts sucking with a typical hungry suck-suck-suck. After a few minutes of initial satiation, he falls into a new pattern: suck-sucksuck -pause, suck-suck-suck-pause. When he pauses, a nurturing parent automatically looks down at him, chucks his chin, and says “Come on” or “Keep eating.” My colleagues and I compared the pauses when a parent said something with those when she didn’t. When the mother talked to the baby, her stated goal was to keep him sucking. The pauses where she responded were lengthened by the baby, as if his goal was to heighten communication as a major part of feeding. For him, even as a new baby, feeding was not just for food—but also for communication. This expectation, when it’s fulfilled, leads him to feel cared for as well as taken care of. A whole new, exciting world opens up. “I’m important—it’s me they care about!” As early as six to eight weeks of age, a baby begins to differentiate mother, father, and a stranger in his behavioral and vocal responses. He not only learns what to expect from each parent, but his behavior in response is geared to draw them to him. With his mother at two months, he squirms slowly, fingers, toes, mouth, eyes going out and coming back smooth, three times a minute. As he smiles and gurgles, she responds with excited smiles and gurgles. She is predictably his! With his father at two months, his every movement is jerky and excited. His face is all “up” as if eliciting the playful poking and joking that new fathers resort to. Play becomes their x Foreword communication, as early as two months of age. A new father soon knows his role because the baby leads him. He comes in to play and poke! As the baby begins to smile and to vocalize, he realizes that he gets a joyful response from these important adults. Their responses fuel his attempts to add vocal behavior to the broad expanse of cries as a technique for drawing them to him. Vocal and responsive behavior become richer and richer. The bases for language are laid down in the first months—between child and parent. As a baby communicates with a parent, as early as three months of age, he learns a rhythmic burst-pause pattern, as if waiting for the adult’s response. Parent and child get into a responsive rhythmic dance. He will have learned from his burst-pause sucking pattern that his parent will respond in the pauses—behaviorally and verbally. He has learned that communication is a timed dual operation. Each important adult has a characteristic behavioral and verbal response to which the baby adapts his own unique behavioral response. He is learning to expect and to separate important people from unimportant ones in the first few months. Language and responsive behavior are already linked in his mind as opportunities for learning about his new world. And he is already learning how to elicit these responses from important adults. “I’m learning that I can get them to respond to me in my own way. When I use my body to communicate, they can’t resist me! I’m important.” As the year progresses, exposure to the speech of the important people in his life shows a baby how to learn words! What a feat! His first word is likely to be “dada”—what could be more politically advantageous? The next, delivered with more squirming and eliciting behavior, is often “mama.” No mother can resist. These two important adults are at his disposal. More complex speech follows as they lead him on. “Look how they fall for me.” These important early steps...

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