Aim: To examine vowel development in the babbling of typically-developing Persian-learning infants.

Method: This four-month longitudinal study was conducted with eight typically developing 6–8-month-old Persian-learning infants. A weekly 30–60-minute audio- and videorecording was obtained in their homes from comfort state vocalizations of infants during mother-child interactions. Despite the presence of six vowels in Persian (/i/, /e/, /a/, /u/, /o/, /ɑ/), seven vowels (/i/, /e/, /a/, /u/, /o/, /ɑ/ and /ә/) were identified during the babbling from a total of 74 hours of vocalizations. Inter-rater reliability was obtained for 20% of the vocalizations. The data were analysed by repeated measures ANOVA and Pearson’s correlation coefficient.

Results: The results showed that two vowels /a/ (46.04%) and /e/ (23.60%) were produced with the highest mean frequency of occurrence. Front vowels (71.87%), low vowels (46.78%), and mid vowels (32.45%) were prominent. High inter-rater reliability was obtained (0.99, p<.01).

Conclusions: An increased frequency of occurrence of low and mid front vowels in this study was consistent with previous studies on the emergence of vowels during pre-linguistic vocalizations in other languages.

Implications for children and families: Your child’s speech develops during the first months of life. They are learning to use the building blocks of words while babbling.

Implications for practitioners: This Persian study shows the link between babbling and vowel development providing expectations for typical development.

Funding: Deputy of Research and Technology of the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran.

Key words: children’s voices, infant babbling, Persian, vowels

This presentation relates to the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:

 

• • SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being

• • SDG 4: Quality Education