Child Development Its Nature and Course Child Development Fifth Edition Ganie B. DeHart Its Nature and Course State University of New York at Geneseo Robert G. Cooper L. Alan Sroufe San Jose State University University of Minnesota Slides by Travis Langley Henderson State University

Chapter 7: Toddler Language and Thinking Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Photo copyright © 2003 www.arttoday.com. Used with permission.

Symbolic representation: The use of ideas, images, or other symbols to stand for objects or events. During the toddler period children develop the capacity for symbolic representation. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Photo copyright © 2003 www.arttoday.com. Used with permission.

Children's representational abilities become obvious in their development of language. An abstract, rule-governed system of arbitrary symbols that can be combined in countless ways to communicate information. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Photo copyright © 2003 www.arttoday.com. Used with permission.

The Components of Language Phonology - sounds of a language. Semantics - meanings of words. Morphology - grammatical endings. Syntax - sentence structure. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

The Components of Language Every language has its own set of phonemes, speech sounds that contrast with one another and can change the meaning of a word. The smallest meaningful units in a language are called morphemes. Pragmatics is the set of rules governing conversation and the social use of language. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Productive & Receptive Skills Children need both productive skills and receptive skills to carry on a conversation. The development of receptive skills tends to run slightly ahead of the development of productive skills. Productive skills: Language skills used to put ideas into words. Receptive skills: Language skills used to understand what other people are saying. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Major Tasks in Early Language Learning

Learning the Sound Patterns of a Language The early period of prelinguistic vocalization during the first year of life can be divided into five stages: crying cooing vocal play canonical babbling conversation babbling (jargon) Crying: In the first weeks of life, reflexive vocalization that occurs automatically whenever an infant is overly aroused. Cooing: Prelinguistic vocalizations that consist largely of vowel sounds and express pleasure and contentment, around 2 months. Vocal play: Prelinguistic vocalizations that vary greatly in pitch and loudness, including occasional simple syllables, around 4 months. Canonical babbling: Prelinguistic vocalizations consisting of strings of syllables that sound increasingly like speech, around 6 months. Conversational babbling (jargon): Prelinguistic vocalizations in which infants use adultlike stress and intonation, around 10 months. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Learning the Sound Patterns of a Language Two things are needed to prepare children to begin speaking: Must gain control over their speech apparatus to produce speech sounds intentionally. Must learn the phonemes of their particular language by paying close attention to the speech sounds they hear and begin imitating them. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Learning the Sound Patterns of a Language Between 10-12 months, most children start to make the transition from babbling to true speech. Protowords: Vocalizations that seem to have consistent meanings for a child and are used in attempts to communicate, but do not closely resemble adults words in sound or meaning. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Photo copyright © 2003 www.arttoday.com. Used with permission.

Learning Words & Their Meanings First Words First words usually refer to: familiar persons “Mama” body parts “Nose” animals “Doggie” objects “Ball” First words may also express: feelings “Goodboy” movement “Up” social commands not broken down into their component words “Gimme!” Many children say their first clearly identifiable words around their first birthday, although there is great individual variation. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Learning Words & Their Meanings First Words Children differ in the purposes for which they use their first words. Referential style: Words primarily refer to objects and events. Mothers of referential children often encourage labeling vs. the directing of children’s behavior more common with expressive style children. Expressive style: Words primarily express social routines. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Learning Words & Their Meanings Vocabulary Growth Average vocabulary for 18-month-olds is 50 words, then there is a dramatic vocabulary increase. Referential children have more obvious vocabulary spurts. Average productive vocabulary = 8,000 to 14,000 words for the average 6-year-old. Children's receptive vocabularies are considerably larger than their productive vocabularies. Between ages 1 and 6, the average child is learning an average of 5.5 new words per day (40,000 words by age 10 or 11). Vocabulary spurt: A sudden increase in word acquisition at about 18 months of age. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Learning Words & Their Meanings Processes of Word Learning Not until around the vocabulary spurt do children start using categorical words for people, objects, & events. A milestone comes when the child discovers everything has a name. Children's first task in learning words is to extract them from the stream of speech they hear, which leads to some segmentation errors (e.g., “readit the book” ). Segmentation errors: Mistakes in detecting boundaries between words in a sentence. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Learning Words & Their Meanings Processes of Word Learning Even before age 2, children can use fast mapping, which is helped by joint attention. Fast mapping: A young child uses context cues to make quick & reasonably accurate guess about the meaning of an unfamiliar word. Whole-object assumption: Children’s tendency to assume unfamiliar objects are names for objects rather than for attributes or actions. Lexical contrast: Children’s tendency to assume no two words have the same meaning. Joint attention: Tendency for language-learning children and adult conversation partners to share a focus of attention. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Learning Words & Their Meanings Errors in Early Word Learning A common semantic mistake involves errors of underextension. too restricted use of a word example: calling toy trucks “truck” but not full-sized trucks on the road Another common error involves overextension too global of a word use example: calling a bus “truck” Whole-object assumption: Children’s tendency to assume unfamiliar objects are names for objects rather than for attributes or actions. Lexical contrast: Children’s tendency to assume no two words have the same meaning. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Learning Morphological Rules Children's first words are usually single morphemes. A language's grammatical morphemes (units of language that change the meanings of words and sentences) are gradually added. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Photo copyright © 2003 www.arttoday.com. Used with permission.

Learning Morphological Rules Order of Acquisition First children add -s to nouns and -ing to form present participles. Later they used -ed to form past tense verbs and -s to form the third person singular. The last to appear are those for contractions of the verb to be. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Learning Morphological Rules Productivity & Overregularization Morphological development provides clear evidence that language development involves rule learning. Overregularization: Language errors in which a child applies a morphological rule to a word that is an exception to the rule. example: “mouses” for mice Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Learning to Form Sentences In any system of syntax, individual words belong to particular form classes, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Syntactic rules specify how words belonging to various form classes can be combined to make phrases, clauses, and sentences. Form class: A category of words in a language that can fill similar syntactic roles in forming phrases and sentences. Form classes are highly abstract, and cannot be learned simply by noticing how specific words are used and then figuring out a rule for each word. Instead, children somehow extract and use rules involving these abstract categories from the particular, concrete examples of speech they hear. An important feature of syntactic rules is their productivity. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

The One-Word Stage When children first begin to speak, they use only one word at a time. When these words are used to communicate a more complex meaning, they are said to function as holophrases. Holophrase: A single word that conveys the meaning of a phrase or sentence. “Mama” = “Here is Mama.” “Mama” = “I want my Mama.” “Mama” = “This belongs to Mama.” Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

First Sentences At 18-24 months, toddlers start to put two words together, tied into the appearance of verbs in the child’s vocabulary. When true two-word sentences appear, they usually take the form of telegraphic speech. Telegraphic speech: A toddler speech style in which words not essential to the meaning of a sentence (articles, conjunctions, prepositions) are omitted. Categories of meaning in telegraphic speech are quite similar across languages. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Further Syntactic Development Brown’s Stages of Early Syntactic Development based on length of utterances Express simple semantic & syntactic relationships (1-2 morphemes). “See teddy.” Acquire basic grammatical morphemes (2-2.5 morphemes). “See teddies.” Variations on simple sentences, incl. questions (2.5-3 morphemes). “Where’s Mommy?” “You can’t come.” Subordinate clauses (3-3.5 morphemes). “I want you to do it.” Join simple sentences to form compound sentences (3.5-4). “I had cake and Daddy had ice cream.” As children's sentences grow longer, they also become more grammatically complex. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Learning to Use Language Socially Children also acquire linguistic and communicative competence. Linguistic competence involves syntactically and semantically correct use of a language. Communicative competence involves being able to carry on conversations, repair breakdowns in communications, and to use language in socially appropriate ways (as determined by culture). Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

The Child and the Environment in Language Development

How can children learn a language in such a short time? Environment theories stress environmental factors in language acquisition, including: the language the child hears structure of social interactions physical environment Nativist theories stress inborn, biologically based factors in language acquisition. Skinner The debate began in the 1950's, when Skinner (Verbal Behavior, 1957) proposed an environmentalist explanation of language acquisition (vocabulary and grammar) based on instrumental learning theory involving reinforcement. Chomsky (Syntactic Structures, 1957) proposed a nativist explanation based on the idea that capacities of the human brain function as a language acquisition device (LAD) to allow young children to detect the rules of language. Chomsky’s argument was very strong. Chomsky Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Chomsky argued that all languages share structural characteristics because language and the human brain evolved together. Language acquisition device: Chomsky’s term for innate capacities of the human brain that make language possible. assumed that part of the brain is specially adapted for language learning ignored social contexts in which language acquisition occurs Most current researchers agree both inborn & environmental factors contribute to language development. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

What the Child Brings to Language Acquisition Evidence For Biological Underpinnings Apparent sensitive period early in life Hemispheric specialization Brain changes at 8-9 months of age Species-specific nature of language Inborn abilities & constraints Hemispheric specialization: The process by which brain functions become localized in the right or left side of the cerebral cortex. Language is species-specific: All humans share the ability as a result of common inheritance, but that is not found in other species. Inborn Abilities & Constraints Infants as young as 7 months can detect rules & regularities. By 8 months, infants may segment words from a continuous stream of speech. By 9 months, they may break down speech they hear into phrases and clauses. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

The Environment of Language Learning Child-directed speech (CDS) = motherese: The modifications adults make in their speech when talking to young children. simpler grammatically includes fewer grammatical errors higher pitch clauses & boundaries more clearly marked by pauses, intonation focus more on objects and present tense events quite redundant includes many questions about objects & events Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

The Environment of Language Learning Impact of Child-Directed Speech (CDS) Simplifies input. Makes clear connections between words and what they refer to. Provides chances for linguistic practice. Serves attentional & affective functions in parent-infant interaction. CDS by itself does not explain language acquisition, but it does simplify the input, make clear connections between words and the things they refer to, and provide chances for linguistic practice. It also serves attentional and affective functions in parent-infant interaction. Bruner has suggested that the ways in which adults structure children's language environment should be considered a language acquisition support system (LASS)--a complement to Chomsky's LAD. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Nonlinguistic Aspects on Symbolic Representation With toddlerhood comes the ability to manipulate symbols intentionally, creating new ideas and thoughts. Symbolic language coincides with stage 6 of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage, that of mental representations. Nonlinguistic Aspects on Symbolic Representation

Toddlers’ Pretend Play 14-19 months Pretend play with replica objects (dolls, toy horses, toy cars) increases. 19-24 months Use of substitute objects (using pillow to represent a baby, a block to represent a car) increases. by 24 months Most children can use one substitute object in a pretend scenario (using block to feed a baby doll). later sensorimotor Double substitutions (using a block for a bottle and a pillow as a baby) will appear. Another manifestation of emerging symbolic representational capacities. Able to use progressively less realistic objects as symbols in their play. Social context influences engagement in pretend play. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Toddlers’ Use of Gestures around 9 months Simple communicative gestures (such as pointing) normally emerge. 9-12 months Conventional social gestures (like waving bye-bye, nodding yes, shaking the head no) usually appear. 12-18 months Toddlers begin producing symbolic gestures, representing some object or action. 10-18 months Children gradually use more gestures. around 18 months Frequency of gesture use declines. around 24 months Frequency of gesture use levels off. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Toddlers’ Understanding of Iconic Symbols Symbols that closely resemble the things they represent. 9 months old Babies seem confused by pictures. They try to grasp objects portrayed in them. 20 months old Babies seem to understand objects in pictures are not physically present. 2 years old When shown a picture of where a toy is hidden, they are rarely able to find it. 2-and-a-half years old When shown a picture of where a toy is hidden, children find it 80% of the time. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Child Development Its Nature and Course Child Development Fifth Edition Ganie B. DeHart Its Nature and Course State University of New York at Geneseo Robert G. Cooper L. Alan Sroufe San Jose State University University of Minnesota Slides by Travis Langley Henderson State University