The way babies communicate before their first words

“Before their first words” is an educational website addressed to parents and educators to encourage communication and language development of children aged between 0 and 12 months. It is a multimedia science tool with a video gallery, practical tips, teaching materials, and even expert advice in the field.

The website is the result of the project Precursors of language, led by the scientific researchers Pilar Prieto, from Prosodic Studies Group of Universitat Pompeu Fabra (GrEP-UPF), and Laura Bosch, from the Attention, Perception and Language Acquisition Laboratory of Universitat de Barcelona (SALW-UB), together with the collaboration of Danielle Matthews, from University of Sheffield.

The project is part of the RecerCaixa research program of excellence, promoted by “la Caixa” Foundation and Associació Catalana d’Universitats Públiques (ACUP, Catalan Public Universities Association).

Links of interest:

• Website Before their first words
• Esteve-Gibert, N.; Prieto, P.; Pons, F. (2015). “Nine-month-old infants are sensitive to the temporal alignment of prosodic and gesture prominences”. Infant Behavior and Development, 38, p. 126-129.
• Igualada, A.; Bosch, L.; Prieto, P. (2015).“Language development at 18 months is related to multimodal communicative strategies at 12 months”. Infant Behavior and Development, 39, p. 42-52.

Este blog cuenta con la colaboración de la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología – Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación