Psychology Commons^™

Infant Language Development: The Consequences Of Trauma, Janna Pickett

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

Infants between 0 and 36 months who experience physical and emotional trauma are at risk for severe social, emotional, cognitive, and physiological developmental deficits (Carpenter & Stacks, 2009; Jacobsen et al., 2013). As researchers search for protective factors against these deficits, productive language acquisition (the words an infant can verbally produce) has emerged as a potential predictor of resilience (Bellagamba et al., 2014; McCabe & Meller, 2004). This review proposes that infants who have acquired more advanced language, such as emotion descriptors, are able to define their experiences, learn how to respond to those experiences, and feel in control of …