What key ability do infants gain related to language development during the sensorimotor stage?

During the sensorimotor stage of development, which spans from birth to about two years of age, infants primarily focus on exploring the world through their senses and motor activities. One of the significant milestones in this stage is the onset of language development. This typically manifests through the development of verbal communication, where infants begin to babble and eventually form words.

As infants gain experience interacting with their environment, they start to associate sounds with meanings, leading to their ability to communicate verbally. By the end of the sensorimotor stage, many infants can say a few words and understand simple commands, laying the foundation for more complex language skills in subsequent stages. Thus, the ability related to language development during this stage is best exemplified by the emergence of verbal communication.

Understanding full sentences and engaging in writing and reading are skills that develop later in childhood, while the separation of reality and imagination is a cognitive milestone that typically emerges in later developmental stages, specifically during the preoperational stage.