Question: Do infants attempt to comunicate via bodylanguage and dialect, and apart from the obvious ones, what do they do to comunicate?

Caspar Addyman answered on 21 Mar 2011:

Mostly babies do stick to the obvious means of getting our attention (crying and waving). It works for them so at first it doesn’t occur to them to try anything more complicated. But as they get older (beyond 8months or so) they want to communicate more compliated things and can’t do just by crying. But even if they want to speak they have a problem because speech is a very hard skill to master (even before you learn the meanings of words you have to learn to coordinate lots and lots of diiffrerent muscles in order to make the right noises)

Therefore, some parents teach their babies a simple form of sign language (called makaton) Babies can learn to make these simple gestures more easily than they can make the sounds and so they can use this to ask for a drink or food. etc..

And then for a while because these babies have a way of asking for what they want they don’t need to concentrate on speaking so early. Some parents and scientists think this is good, some worry that it is a delay in children’s speech.

Personally, I don’t think it matters either way.. Different children learn to speak at different ages and once they start all children learn at a phenomenal rate so there is no problem with them starting early or late.

Besides, babies are also learning to communicate in other ways. Simple bits of bodylanguage that we take completely for granted. Like pointing or watching where someone else is looking to see what they are interested in. Even clever animals like dogs and chimpanzees have a real problem understanding pointing and I don’t think any animal can follow just the eye gaze of another. But by one year old almost all normally developing babies can understand both of these forms of communication