N OROMOTOR SKILLS X SPEECH DVPT

 A

3 KEY POINTS — Early Speech Milestones & Oral–Motor Development (Allison et al., 2026)

1. Better oral–motor skills are linked to earlier speech development
   Infants with higher scores on the Child Oral and Motor Proficiency Scale (ChOMPS) were more likely to have started babbling by 6 months, suggesting a relationship between motor control of the mouth and early speech emergence.

2. Stronger oral–motor development is associated with richer vocal output
   Higher ChOMPS scores were significantly associated with a larger variety of protophones (early speech-like sounds such as vowel- and consonant-like vocalisations) reported by parents.

3. Preterm birth and sex were not influential factors
   Neither prematurity nor infant sex affected babbling onset or phonetic inventory, indicating that oral–motor ability was a more important predictor than these demographic variables in this small sample.