Birth to three matters - Communities and Local Government

elationships with close and protectiveadults. Babies who do not haveopportunities to touch,gaze, coo andbabble with responsive adults give upon conversation-like exchanges. Thereis evidence of this from the work ofGoldschmeid in state institutions forgroups of abandoned children in Trieste,Italy in 1954. These children had excellentphysical care but no personal care. Thebabies who persistently failed to getattention from an adult becamewithdrawn, passive and despairing. Theystopped looking for friendship in adultsor with other children…Sometimes thisis not recognised for what it is, but ismistaken for contentment.‘As long ago as the 1970s, research bySnow (1977), Snow and Ferguson (1977),and others, was demonstrating thatalthough babies who are three months olddo not contribute much to a conversationthrough vocalising, they already havegeneral ‘rules’ about communicating.For example, they will gaze at the familiaradult and sustain an interaction in apattern which matches exactly that oftwo adults in conversation.In their boo k , The Social Ba by, Mu rrayand An d rews (2000), not only prov i d es u perb photog raphic ev i d e n ce ofbabies co m m u n i cating from birt h ,t h ey state,‘Babies are attracted to other people frombirth and they quickly prefer the peoplewho have become familiar. But the babyd oe s n’t simply wa nt to be near her familyand their friends – she wa nts to share herex pe ri e n ce with other people and inte ra ctwith them!’ ( Mu rray and An d rews 2000: 47 ).Further, babies become quiet whentheir mother or other familiar personapproaches, apparently primed forinteraction. By the age of three months,a baby who has begun vocalising andwho gets a response (being talked to andother types of positive attention) willincrease the amount of vocalisation. Snowalso points out that mothers will usuallysimplify their speech, restricting thecontent, using repetition,simplifyinggrammar and emphasising intonation.Babies and children are able to givefeedback clues which tell the adultsaround them when the simplified speechcan be modified a little to become morelike the type we would use to anexperienced language user.Bruner (1983) cites the work of Piagetin remarking that babies may spend theirtime doing only a small range of activities(such as banging, reaching, looking) butthey are systematic in their repetitionsof these activities. He adds that we shouldnot be surprised therefore, that they arealso systematic when it comes tolanguage, as the work of Weir (1962)(on spontaneous speech in the cot)and Bowerman’s (1978) on children’sspontaneous errors, show.When babies and children interact witheach other, they have a different ‘voice’67