North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Language Development and Communication (LDC)

Subdomain: Learning to Communicate

Goal: Children participate in conversations with peers and adults in one-on-one, small, and larger group interactions.

Skill Progression: Participate in conversations with peers and adults

Age: 2-4 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 2-4 Months.

Smiles and starts vocal turn taking when adult imitates the infant’s sounds

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the infant in face-to-face interaction with the adult and other familiar adult.

Elicitation Strategy

The adult smiles at the infant and waits.

Behavior Observed

The infant makes cooing noises. When the adult repeats the infant's sounds, the infant makes more noises.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Emphasize the importance of talking to the infant when diapering, bathing, and playing together. The parent should also imitate the child’s vocalizations to stimulate the child to make more sounds. The child repeats the sounds she just made before she can imitate novel sounds.

 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2015

©2015 by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.