Describe early speech sounds, including the acquisition of communication skills during infancy and toddlerhood

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Around 2 months, babies begin to make vowel-like noises, called cooing because of their pleasant "oo" quality. Gradually, consonants are added, and around 6 months babbling appears, in which infants repeat consonant–vowel combinations. Babies everywhere start babbling at about the same age and produce a similar range of early sounds. But for babbling to develop further, infants must hear human speech.
Babies initially produce a limited number of sounds and then expand to a much broader range. Around
7 months, babbling includes consonant–vowel syllables common in spoken languages. And as caregivers respond contingently to infant babbles, infants modify their babbling to include sound patterns like those in the adult's speech. Joint attention, in which the child attends to the same object or event as the caregiver, contributes greatly to early language development. Between 4 and 6 months, interactions between caregivers and babies begin to include give-and-take, as in pat-a-cake and peekaboo games. Around the first birthday, babies extend their joint attention and social interaction skills: They point toward an object or location while looking back toward the caregiver, in an effort to direct the adult's attention and influence their behavior. Infant pointing leads to two communicative gestures. The first is the protodeclarative, in which the baby points to, touches, or holds up an object while looking at others to make sure they notice. In the second, the protoimperative, the baby gets another person to do something by reaching, pointing, and often making sounds at the same time. Over time, some of these gestures become explicitly symbolic. Soon toddlers integrate words with gestures, using the gesture to expand their verbal message. Toddlers' use of preverbal gestures predicts faster early vocabulary growth in the second and third years.