The Infant Monitor of vocal Production (IMP) was conceived as an educational strategy to help parents understand the nature and pace of their baby's vocal development following neonatal diagnosis and amplification for hearing loss. The potential for other clinical applications emerged with use. The instrument presents as a series of parent-professional conversations that scaffold parent observation and evaluation of their baby's vocal development across the first 12 months of natural hearing ability/early device-aided hearing experience. A graphic representation of IMP results illustrates for parents and professionals the timeliness (or otherwise) of a baby's advancement through a hierarchy of vocal behaviours that demonstrate the emergence and integrity of an infant's audition-production loop--the mechanism whereby acuity of hearing guides nascent vocal productions to progressively "mirror" the acoustic features of accessible speech. A pilot study showed that the IMP quantified typical infant vocal development as a function of chronological age/normal hearing experience (birth to 12 months). Further, it demonstrated that the instrument was sensitive to individual differences in rate of vocal development for infants, from birth to 12 months of device-assisted hearing age.