3 Major Cognitive Milestones and How They Relate to Language Development
If I asked you to name the three major cognitive milestones we see babies and toddlers acquire just before they begin to talk, I bet you could come up with those!
Let’s see how you do.
Take a minute and think about it before you keep scrolling.
Before I relieve your suspense and tell you what they are, I want to ask you an even more important question.
How do each of these milestones relate to learning to talk and use words to communicate?
It’s an important piece of early language development that every therapist who works in early intervention and pediatrics should be able to explain to parents and teachers.
Parents and teachers value cognitive development and are teaching young children these concepts, but most of the time, they don’t understand the connection and how each of these milestones plays a vital part in early language development.
In case you need a refresher so that you can explain this better, here goes…
Learn how to explain the 3 Major Cognitive Milestones and How They Relate to Language Development.
The 3 Major Cognitive Milestones are:
Object Permanence
Cause & Effect
Simple Problem Solving
Here’s how each one relates to learning first words:
Understanding object permanence signals an important development in an infant’s working memory, as it means they can now form, and retain, a mental representation of an object. This is the beginning of learning to think “abstractly.” He can hold a symbol – the visual picture of the object – in his mind as he searches to find it. The visual picture (and desire!) drive him to search for an item that’s seemingly gone. Once a child understands object permanence, he’s ready to learn a label for that object. Now he’s ready for the word.
Cause & effect means that a child can use ‘directed groping’ to see what will happen next as he maneuvers an object. Eventually, babies make connections by manipulating objects during play… “When I do this, this happens.” This skill is an important cognitive milestone because through this kind of play, babies and toddlers learn communicative intent. Without intentionality, purposefully directing your behavior so that another specific event will occur, a child doesn’t learn to do something to get something. Isn’t that what early requesting, whether it be with gestures or words, is all about?
In this same developmental period, a child continues to learn and begins to move beyond cause and effect to solve simple problems. During play, a child learns through trial and error to pursue different options and produce new outcomes. If we put it into an adult’s words, babies begin to think something like … “The block does not fit in this hole. Where does it fit?” or…“Uh oh! My sippy cup rolled under the couch. How can I get it?”
During play and everyday routines, babies and toddlers learn to move on and try various ways of doing something when their initial attempts don’t work. This ability to generate a new idea is the hallmark of cognition. This may be one of the reasons we learn to talk in the first place! We learn that we can use our voices and then words, rather than crying or gesturing, to explain to someone what we want. It’s much more efficient. As we learn more vocabulary and can say new words, it gets even easier.
SUMMARY
These milestones should be included in all our speech therapy treatment plans when a child is not talking yet. If you’re working with a child who has significant delays, this is also your starting point. Therapists should teach parents how to work on these three areas at home, primarily in play. I’ve compiled a post with toys and very brief descriptions for how/why to use the toys, but if you want to know more, I’d recommend the following resources:
Teach Me To Talk: The Therapy Manual… there’s a whole chapter on teaching early cognitive skills with pages and pages of activities and ideas to walk you through a detailed therapy plan to address these milestones which can be done in therapy sessions or at home by parents.
#450… I linked this podcast below that explains receptive language skills and cognitive skills by 12 months. Listen or watch for a longer discussion. Even if a child is older than 12 moonths and not talking, we should work on these goals until they are STRONG and STABLE. Scroll to to watch this course. If you’re working with a child who has significant delays, this is also your starting point. The recommended toys post is at this link for implementing the therapy ideas in the podcast.
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It works!! He went from barely verbal, no gestures, didn't respond to his name etc etc to a verbal, social, curious, ready to imitate anything, fill in the blanks on familiar "set" speech, generate his own totally appropriate and mostly understandable sentences...not just short phrases anymore... full little paragraphs...about imaginary things, what he did during the day, what he wants. True communication!
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