This video talks about how kids who learn a second language, or who are brought up bilingual, develop in terms of brain function, cognition and social development. It answers the question: are multilingual kids "smarter" than monolingual ones.
I went online and did some research on this particular milestone, pointing. According to psychologists in child development, pointing, by virtue of its referential function, has been characterized as a kind of behavioral stepping-stone to symbolic reference (Bates et al., 1975; Butterworth, 1998). In fact, Franco and Butterworth reported that in their study, infants who pointed did so only in the presence of other observers, what they call the audience effect.
Pointing normally develops at approximately 1 year of age, (exhibited by more than half of the human infants in most studies of pointing) and it's been said to be a precursor to speech. Now, I am not the first parent who's worried that her child is not developing speech "on time", and you would think me ridiculous, since Juju is by standardised testing, ahead of schedule. Well, I also know that plenty of people claim that these "standards" of child development shouldn't be taken seriously (that's only because their kids didn't fall outside of the developmental time tables). By the 12th month, Juju should be babbling. Ah, what is babbling? Online, tons of speech therapy websites describe the complicated nomenclature in baby babbling, but Ju does none of it. The more alarmist part about advising you to bring your kid in to see a doctor if he isn't doing it by the 12th month is found on all 4 sites I visited. I decided to ignore it.
Psychologists who studied human infant pointing say that it is accompanied by linguistically ambiguous vocalizations from approximately 8 to 21 months of age. It's not surprising, since the kid IS trying to tell us something, and as noted by Butterworth (1998), pointing frequently accompanies naming behavior in humans, especially human infants and their primary caretakers. Ju would mostly point and grunt "huhh" or look to me with a surprised expression on his face and then do his hand signal, which we interpret as "not there". So the past few weeks Ju's pretty much been saying, "The fan!" "The light! It's not on, why is it not on?" "The coffee machine! I want to press the buttons on the coffee machine!" "What are those? I want those!" "I flung the cup outside, look! I don't have it anymore!"
The most fun part about this stage is Ju's ability to understand words and signal that his comprehension, in three languages. He knows the German, Chinese and English words for fan, light, coffee, car, bird, ball, dinosaur, cup". We know this because we test him all the time! Aside from pointing at the objects when we ask him where they are, I place three random objects like the toy car, cup and ball together and ask him for one of them. When his attention is focused, he'll pick the right one. I don't know what exactly he knows in English since I hardly use it with him, but he's starting to pay attention to pictures, so we try to teach him those objects (usually animals) in his books and his playmat as much as possible. The only problem is there is only so much we can teach him given the limitation of time and opportunity. When Ju acquires language naturally and in a natural setting (daily activities, exposure to various people and places), he would acquire the three languages in different degrees.
I was consoled at least by one researcher, Amy Vaughan Van Hecke, assistant professor of psychology at Marquette University in Milwaukee who said that "children who pointed at a year old were less aggressive and more outgoing at two and three". She thinks the behavior paves the way for children to ask for and get what they need instead of acting out or withdrawing.
Well, let's see in a year then when Ju hopefully will speak!
1 comment:
of course I am babbling lah. don't be impatient.
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