A main source for the ages
Large-scale investigations of variability in children's first words
Rose M. Schneider, Daniel Yurovsky, Michael C. Frank · 2015 · Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
- Children
- About 2,300 children
- Where
- Mostly the United States
- Ages
- Babies and toddlers, asked about their first word
- How
- Parents told researchers their child's first word and when it was said. One group came from parents' word lists instead.
- What it found
- About half of children had said their first word by 10 months, and more than 3 in 4 by their first birthday. This held in all four groups of children. "Mama" and "dada" weren't counted.
- Limits
- It relies on parents remembering. Most families were in the United States, and some groups were more educated than average. Some surveys couldn't record ages before 8 or 10 months.