Baby Lab Update - 24 Months

The update of the Baby Lab came this time as an extensive report.  It confirmed what we knew, that Lily’s expressive vocabulary is rapidly growing and that she is "very tuned in to word learning."  We are so grateful to be involved in this study.   It is also interesting that this language sample was a few weeks ago and Lily's language has already changed so much since then. 

Here is a Communication Sample Description from the report:

Lilly communicated frequently during the play session with her mother.  A language sample transcript was prepared based on 15 minutes of their interaction.  This provided 271 maternal utterances and 105 child utterances. 

1. The majority of Lily’s conversational turns consistent of words and word attempts.
2. Although most of her utterances were single words, she produced ten 2-word combinations, and one 3-word combination.  Near the end of the session, Lily produced additional 2-word combinations, such as cracker down (to report that the cracker fell down), want it (to answer do you want it?), more mommy, and Mickey Donald (to request toys).  During our last session (6 weeks ago), Lily was not yet combining words, so this is a fairly recent development.  There were several instances of chaining of words, as well.  This suggests that Lily is moving toward the two-word stage.
3. It was notable that Lily is appropriately answering a variety of questions.  Today these included:   “Who/What is that? What color is that?  Do you want…? Where does this fit? How many do you want?”  Lily’s mother remarked that her daughter is increasingly conversational, able to take turns and answer questions across several exchanges.  Lily has learned to count and name colors.  She has begun to use spatial terms (off, on, back, front). 
4. Lily uses /hmm/ for a variety of purposes.  She sometimes seems to be taking a turn, commenting or asking for information.  Today’s sample contained 24 examples of these.  She is using these less often than we observed in the session 6 weeks ago.
5. Lily produces a wide array of consonant and vowel sounds in her word approximations.  She often simplifies two syllable words to cvcv forms (like papa for popcorn or dEdo for there go).  She marks some words with final consonants (nope, out, wash).  Usually words with final consonants ended with /p, t, n or sh/.  She is producing some appropriate diphthongs in familiar words. 
6. Lily spontaneously imitates some words and simple phrases.  It was interesting to observe her imitating both the prosody and the phonetic content of some models.
7. Lily attempted blend production in flower (fwawa); she produced a fricative on the end of blocks (bash). 
8. Lily has begun to refer to herself by name, using an n/l substitution.
9. Lily demonstrates strong play skills; she engaged in sequences of feeding baby dolls and she cooperated with her mother in going on an imaginary car ride. 

Lily’s mother provides a language rich environment for her daughter.  It is a pleasure to watch the number of strategies she uses to expand Lily’s utterances, promote thinking, and encourage conversation.  Lily is clearly benefiting from the language input provided by her family.  Lily responded readily to comments and questions, showing that she is able to comprehend auditory messages with ease. 

On the communicative temptations of the CSBS, nearly all of Lily’s communicative messages were words.  She commented (that, mommy Lily, yellow, Donald, wet), requested (more, bubble, blow), answered (Do you want bubbles?…no, Mickey), and used social phrases (thank you).  It is encouraging to see the increasing concepts and ideas that Lily is able to convey as her language skills advance.  Lily is making excellent progress in response to her family and her intervention programs.