Family History and Its Influence on Infants' Language Development

Infants' language development built upon a variety of experience. Language is commonly defined as an organized way of combining symbols in order to communicate. Parents and caretakers plays an important role in helping children learns to communicate, read and write. There is possibly no greater shift in development than the advancement of language abilities from birth to three. So in present study researcher had made an attempt to identify the language development from 0-2 years. The study was undertaken in Coimbatore district with the total sample of 100 infants selected randomly in the age group 0-2 years and the researcher also interviewed their caretakers like parents, grandparents/aya whose age range from 22-65 years. The researcher framed self-prepared questionnaire to interview care takers as well as had observation of each child. The researcher contacted the infant's care takers and also made direct observation and collected information on how infants respond to their environment, family health status, home environment, care takers role, family type, number of children they have and quality of child care given. Researcher made observation on infants' responses to language or speech and child's abilities in language. From this study it has been found that there was a significant difference observed in infants' language development with respect to gender, number of children present in family, type of family and type of care taker. Family history and health status were less affected on female infants' language development compared to male infants. Whereas, child's age did not predict much influences on language development. Joint family children performed better language and social skills compared to nuclear and extended families. Even though mother and child interactions were more important for language development, children did better when they were along with the grandparents and parents. However when children brought up with helper/aya were not able to think, respond and communicate properly and also discovered they were slower in language abilities.