How can human growth and development affect communication abilities?

Answer

"As a human baby's brain grows and the coordination of tongue, lips and vocal cords improves, they learn to speak. As they grow older, they are exposed to new Words and ideas. Their vocabulary, grammar and communication skills develop." --Yahoo Answers UK and Ireland

"Dr. Cooper states that the causes of muteness range from brain damage as a result of a low Iodine diet during the baby's formation, to brain injuries, substance abuse, strokes, Selective Mutism and various other causes." - eHow

Answer

Human growth and development affects all of a humans abilities. It is well known that abilities that are functional but not used in first years of our lives can be difficult to develop fully or at all, depending on the length and/or completeness of the early deprivation. In the first few years of life, a human brain sets up pathways to process sensory information received. As a person gets older, it becomes more and more difficult to set up new pathways, as shown by the difficulty for brain injured adults to relearn everyday skills such as walking and talking. It can also be observed in persons moving to a place that speaks a language different from those they know; the age of the person at the time they are trying to learn a language can affect their success. It can be done with enough motivation of the patient or emigre.

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Communication requires a number of senses to accomplish; intake of information, processing that information to find correlation with information already acquired and processing the result to form outgoing communication. A lot of pathways to develop. If they are not developed early enough, the ability to develop them is compromised. Unlike a brain injured adult who has some previous communication experience, a person deprived of this experience has less to work with and may not be as motivated or may even give up the effort.