Language Development in Preschool & School-Age: Lexicon Growth, Figurative Language, Persu, Study notes of Psychology

Download Language Development in Preschool & School-Age: Lexicon Growth, Figurative Language, Persu and more Study notes Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Exam 3 Notes 13-1 Review of Preschool Language Development Welcome to CSD 333 Oral Language Development, Week 14! This week we’re continuing to talk about the preschool years. This is the period that typically includes the 2 years before a child enters elementary school, so we’re talking about ages 3 to 5 years. So what sort of language development skills would we expect children to have acquired during these preschool years? Last time we talked about some of the accomplishments that are expected during the preschool phase. With respect to literacy, we said that children at this stage are beginning to develop alphabet knowledge, knowledge of the letters of their name, knowledge of the order of the letters in the alphabet, and so forth. Children are also developing an interest in printed materials. They don’t naturally gravitate toward this black and white medium, but with additional input from adults, their interest can be steered and they do develop an interest in print and the meaning behind the words on the printed page. During the preschool years, they are also developing shallow phonological awareness, developing skills between mapping the sound patterns of words to the spelled or orthographic form in a shallow or initial way on their journey to beginning to read. They also will have accomplished a number of feats regarding their speech development. For example, by the end of the preschool years they will have mastered a sizeable number of phonemes, definitely more than 10 accounting for typical development. They also will have developed a level of intelligibility or understandability that is almost 100%. That is, by the time a child has reached the end of the preschool phase we expect that they should be highly understandable and highly intelligible. Moreover, children have begun to deduce the phonological patterns that are present in their speech producing less substitution of different places of articulation, less fronting, less gliding, they are reducing syllables, producing less cluster reduction, and other syllable structure patterns, and they’re producing less assimilation, showing patterns of influence of phonemes that is more consistent with what is typical for adults. Regarding language development, they should have already achieved Brown’s stages 1 through 3 in the toddler phase, and in the preschool stage we expect that they would have achieved stages 4 and 5. They also have moved into using decontextualized language, language that does not require an immediate context in order to be understood. So they can say things like, “Mommy, I spilled the spaghetti,” and the mom can understand what the child is saying without the child having to say, “Mom, I did that,” or pointing or using some other reference to the context. This use of decontextualized language helps prepare them for the school years. They also are showing the emergence of many more morphemes during the preschool years than they had shown during toddlerhood, consistent with the 14 that Brown had laid out in terms of those that are acquired within the first 48 months or so. Moreover, during the preschool years, they will have achieved an MLU typically between 3 and 4.5 morphemes long. Toward the beginning of the preschool phase they'll be closer to the 3.0 mark, and toward the end of the preschool years they will have achieved something more like 4.5 or more. So there are quite a few accomplishments that children will have achieved during the preschool years with respect to their language development. Now that we’ve finished this brief review, let’s consider some more aspects related to language development during preschool. During the ages of 3 to 5 years old, children are expected to begin to achieve Brown’s stages I, II, and III. True False 13-3 Development of the Lexicon II We’re continuing to talk about the development of the lexicon during the preschool years, and it turns out that reading story books together, that is, shared storybook reading, provides good opportunities for children to learn knew words. Through shared storybook reading, children have additional opportunities to expand their lexicons. It’s been shown that children can learn new words through simply hearing them incidentally, being exposed to them during the course of story book reading sessions. So that, if children hear an unfamiliar word during story book reading, they can internalize it, and they will develop additional familiarity with it simply by having heard the book. However, in terms of best practices, it turns out that including repeated or elaborated exposures to new words, whereby parent or caregiver repeats the new words and/or elaborates on their meanings, this facilitates and improves children’s word learning. Moreover, if adults use an active reading style, some sort of exaggeration, putting emotion into it, this also helps to improve children’s word learning more than readings that don’t have these characteristics. So including repeated or elaborated exposures to new words, expanding on the meanings of the words that is, as well as using an active, engaged reading style when reading story books with children will help improve their word learning. In terms of other topics related to development of the lexicon, let’s talk about deictic terms. Deictic terms are words whose use and interpretation depends on being in a particular location and setting. We’re talking about words like, “here” and “there,” “this” and “that,” where the meanings of the words depend very much on location in a particular setting. If I say, “He’s here,” it means something different than “He’s there.” And we don’t know what the meaning is unless we have reference to the location and setting. It turns out that children master deictic terms only slowly throughout toddlerhood and preschool. So they will not have necessarily mastered many of the fine grained nuances of use of these deictic terms during the first part of the preschool years. An example is a 3-year old swimming across a pool saying, “I’m almost here!” the example reflects that the child hasn’t completely grasped the use of the deictic contrast here vs. there. Interestingly, proximal deictic terms, meaning terms referring to closer to the body like “here” and “this,” these proximal deictic terms are mastered sooner than distal deictic terms, words like “there” and “that,” which refer to something far away from the body. So children are better at grasping and grasp sooner the meanings behind “here” and “this,” which refer to being close to the body, earlier than they master terms like “there” and “that,” which refer to being further away from the body. will typically have mastered deictic terms by about 3 years of age. True False 13-4 Development of the Lexicon III Let’s consider further the topic of how children’s lexicons develop during the preschool years. Relational terms can be a particular challenge for children to master during the preschool years. Relational terms are words whose meanings depend on a particular relationship or set of relationships. We’re going to talk about five relational categories of words that children must learn. Interrogatives reflecting a question-answer relation, temporal terms, opposites like “big” versus “little,” locational prepositions like “in” and “on,” and kinship, or family, terms. Let’s look at these in succession. First consider interrogatives. Interrogatives show a question or answer relationship so that if an utterance starts with words like “what,” “who,” “when,” and so forth, are posed to a child, the child knows that this cues a relationship whereby he or she needs to provide an answer. During the preschool phase, children do become adept at asking and answering most questions. However, their understanding of questions involving more complex intentions are acquired later or may still be lacking by the end of the preschool years. So, let’s consider an example of a somewhat challenging interrogative: challenging for a child at this age. If a parent asks, “Why did the girl get so many presents?” the child may say something like, “She got a bike, a doll, and coloring books.” This answer reflects that the child did not grasp the gist of the question and did not understand the complex intention behind the question to provide a motive for why the child, why the girl, might have gotten so many presents. So, while children’s understanding of most interrogatives reflects mastery of the question-answer relationship, it stands to reason that to the extent that adults might pose more challenging questions to children that the children might not have mastered those particular, more challenging, interrogatives. So, while children have mastered most interrogatives by understanding the desired question-answer relation, the more challenging questions that adults can pose can still trip children up. Next, let’s consider temporal terms. Temporal terms describe the order, duration, or concurrence of events. In what ways have preschoolers grasped these types of relational terms? It turns out that preschoolers will understand terms describing order like “before” and “after” prior to their understanding of terms that describe concurrent events like “while” and “during.” Words like “before” and “after” specify an ordering of events. For example, if I say, “After I eat dinner, I’m going to exercise,” that indicates the ordering of the behaviors of eating and exercise. If only we could all be so virtuous. Words that describe concurrent events like “while” and “during,” these are harder for children to understand and may not be grasped until the end of the preschool years. When preschoolers don’t understand these words, they may fall back on interpreting the meaning according to word order. So for example, consider the sentence: “Before you eat 13-5 Conversational Skills and Narratives Next consider children’s conversational skills and narrative abilities during preschool. Preschoolers begin to improve their conversational skills as they learn how to take turns in conversation, and they come quite a long way during the preschool years in their ability to take turns in conversation. In fact, many preschoolers can maintain a conversation for two or more turns. Moreover, children during preschool develop the ability to engage in “small talk” with peers about themselves, other individuals, objects, fantasy, games, and so forth. Finding common ground with others contributes to children’s development and their social connectivity with others and allows them to participate in more enjoyable forms of communication like sharing their likes and dislikes, talking about their future plans, joking around, and these sorts of things. Moreover, preschoolers develop the ability to share narratives during this phase. A narrative is a spoken or written of a real or fictional event from the past, present, or future. We can distinguish between personal narratives in which an individual shares a factual event that actually occurred from fictional narratives in which an individual shares an imaginary, fictional, event. Both types of narratives require organizing information around a topic or problem and presenting the information in an ordered sequence of events that have a cause-and-effect relationship. In order to tell a narrative story from a personal perspective or about a fictional character or situation, a child has to develop the ability to convey an ordered sequence of information that thread a sequence of events together in a causal or temporal manner. This takes quite a bit of development and most children cannot construct true narratives with a problem and resolution until they’re about four years of age. So, this ability to develop narrative structure and talk about personal or fictional narratives is something that happens during preschool. Most children are able to construct narratives by about 3 years of age. True False 13-6 Individual Differences in Language in Preschool Let’s talk about individual differences in language development during the preschool years. The rate of progress in language development within a given child as well as across different children is not uniform. We can’t expect every child to progress equally across areas of language development, nor can we expect that children within a group will necessarily have similar profiles of language development. In fact, within a given child and across children, there can be substantial differences in which areas of language have progressed. Moreover, children can experience spurts and plateaus in language development during the preschool years just as they can during toddlerhood. We can further generalize to say that individual preschoolers will show different patterns of strength and weakness across the different language areas, that is, across phenology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and so forth so that a child’s phonological development might be very far along while their syntax lacks behind a bit or vice versa. Moreover, children’s literacy abilities in terms of characteristics like phonological awareness, understanding of narratives, and so forth can also differ across children. Let’s consider some more factors relating to individual differences across children. One is SES, or socioeconomic status. We’ve already seen that SES is a factor that can influence language development at many different phases during early childhood. This is also true during the preschool years. In fact, differences between high and low SES groups of children can become even more pronounced during the preschool years. One possible reason is that not all children attend preschool programs, and those children that do attend preschool are subject to varying levels of program quality. The U.S. doesn’t have universal prekindergarten, and so parents who can afford to send their children to quality to preschool programs often do, and parents who can’t afford preschool might or might not take advantage of funded programs like Headstart. Fortunately, research suggests that the quality of teacher-child interactions in the classroom and the quality of teacher language relate positively to children’s language growth in preschool. That is to say that teachers can make a difference in how children in their classroom do with their language development, and teachers can be trained to incorporate higher quality language interactions throughout the day. Another factor that can effect the rate of language development across individuals is gender. Again, gender is an area that we’ve seen can effect language development at many times during early childhood. During the preschool years, differences between the genders in terms of language development do persist, but they become stable during this phase. One interesting fact is that preschool boys and girls use language in quite different ways as shown in a number of studies. So for example, in a study by Libby and Aries 2006, when given story prompts to complete, 3-5 year-old girls included greater numbers of friendly, assistance providing characters and talked about responding to the needs of others whereas boys included more aggressive behavior and more attempts to resolve situations by using aggressive behavior. Also, boys have been shown to tend to use “No!” the negative more often than girls to correct or prohibit behavior of their classmates. So, for example, a boy might say, “No! I was playing with that truck!” Also, perhaps not surprisingly, girls tend to tell more stories about girls, and boys tend to tell more stories about boys. So SES and gender, in summary, are two factors that do effect language development, including during the preschool years. Gender differences in language development become increasingly divergent during the preschool years. True False For athe language sample in 13-7a, what is the number of different words (NDW) in the sample? 7 9 11 13 For the language sample in 13-7a, what is the type-token ratio? About 0.64 About 0.75 About 0.79 About 0.92 13-8 Clinical Tools for Preschool Language Development Let’s talk about clinical tools available for screening, assessing, and monitoring language development. Previously, we described screening measures as those kinds of measures that a clinician would use to screen children quickly to determine whether a specific child might need a more comprehensive language evaluation. In terms of tools that are available for screening preschool children, one is the Expressive Vocabulary Test 2nd Ed or EVT-2. It can be used to screen expressive language difficulties and word retrieval. In the present discussion, we’ll be concerned with introducing you to some of the most common tools for screening comprehensive evaluation and monitoring. Regarding comprehensive evaluation, you’ll recall that clinicians can use comprehensive assessments to determine whether a child has a language disorder and also to learn more about this disorder: what areas might be deficient. One comprehensive evaluation tool is the Preschool Language Scale – 4th Ed. or PSL-4; this is a norm reference measure, meaning that it’s been applied to lots of children so we can figure out what a normal range is, and compare a normal child against that range. And this tool provides information about vocabulary, grammar, morphology, language reasoning, and other types of information. Another tool is the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, or CELF. This tool likewise assesses a broad range of language abilities, including morphology, syntax, vocabulary, and others. Another tool is the Test of Language Development, or TOLD. This tool likewise provides a comprehensive evaluation of important areas of language development. If we focus on literacy, it’s worth mentioning the test of Early Reading Ability – 3rd Ed. or Tera-3, which is a norm reference measure of children’s mastery of early developing reading skills, including alphabet knowledge, meanings, and other information. Next, progress monitoring skills are used to measure and monitor a child’s progress in certain areas of a language development.Clinicians can also use these tools to monitor children’s progress in literacy abilities. One tool that we’ll mention is the Oral and Written Language Scales, or OWLS, which are measures of both expressive and receptive language skills and which can be used to provide a record of children’s language skills across the school year. Clinical tools like these can be important for helping to assess a child’s language abilities, and if necessary, to intervene. What does CELF stand for? Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Comprehensive Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Clinical Estimate of Language Function Other 14-3 The Development of Reading I Between the preschool years and adulthood, children have to learn to read. Children usually progress through a predictable series of stages in this process of learning to read. There are five stages of learning to read, well six if you count the stage before they begin reading. In the coming slides, we’ll look at these six stages. Prereading or stage 0, where children are not reading yet, Stage 1, which is called initial reading or decoding; Stage 2, confirmation, fluency and ungluing from print; Stage 3, reading to learn the new; Stage 4, multiple viewpoints; and Stage 5, construction and reconstruction. Let’s start with prereading, that is, the stage before children learn to read, or Stage 0. This occurs from birth up until the start of formal education. During this stage, oral language is developing. Children are learning the phoneme inventories, they’re learning to talk, learning about syntax and morphology, pragmatics, all of the core language areas of form, content, and use. During the prereading stage, it’s also important that children develop print awareness, an awareness and appreciation of the importance of print in a culture. Another critical foundation on which reading is built is phonological awareness, awareness of the sound patterns that make up words. Significant body of research has shown the importance of prereading achievements in these areas of oral language development, print awareness, and phonological awareness and that these prereading achievements are important for reading success. Once those foundations have been laid, children are reading to start the initial stages of reading. Stage 1 is the initial reading and decoding stage. This is the very first stage when children first enter school from ages kindergarten through 1st grade. A critical skill that children learn in these early years of formal schooling is the ability to associate letters, or graphemes or written symbols on a page, with sounds and words and how to decode those letters and make them into sounds. We can break this down into 3 phases. In the first phase, children might try to read a word and they’ll struggle with it and will come up with substitution errors that are semantically plausible. So for example, if a child was trying to understand the sentence, “the dog was barking,” and the child didn’t know the word “barking,” the child might say the dog was “growling” because growling and barking are both something that a dog would do. But notice that those two words don’t look or sound anything alike. In the second phase of reading, children might approach an unfamiliar word like growling and substitute a word that has a similar graphic resemblance. For example, “green” instead of growling even though green and growling have nothing to do semantically with one another. In the third phase of initial reading and decoding, children will make errors of substitution that have both a phonological resemblance and are semantically plausible. So for example, if the child was trying to figure out the word “growling,” he or she might come up with the word “going.” “The dog is going.” Notice that “going” fits semantically with the context and it also has a phonological similarity and graphic resemblance to the word “growling.” So in the third phase, children put together their knowledge of the relationship between letters and sounds and their knowledge of semantics to come up with the most phonologically and semantically plausible, possible interpretation of an unfamiliar word. Stage 2 is known as confirmation, fluency, and ungluing from print. This corresponds to approximately 2nd through 3rd grade or 7 to 8 years old. In this stage, children hone the skills that they’ve developed from Stage 1 and they gain confidence in their abilities to read. This is a confirmation of their abilities to decode written words. During Stage 2, their reading also gains speed and becomes fluent, meaning it becomes efficient, well- paced, and error-free. Reading also becomes more automatic. Children don’t have to sound out every word and as it becomes automatic, children become unglued from print, they can automatically recognize a word, and they are held captive to decoding every single sound. During which developmental reading stage does reading start to become automatic? Stage 0 Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4 Stage 5 14-4 The Development of Reading II Let’s consider the remaining stages of learning to read. Stage 3 is reading to learn the new. This occurs approximately 4th grade up until the high school years of 8th and 9th grades, so approximately 9 to 14 years old. During this third stage, children have gained enough proficiency in reading that they’re able to read for new information. This allows them to learn information about the world around them. By the end of the third stage, they’re reading solidly and over the course of the stage, they ultimately develop the ability to read books and other works that are approximately adult length. By the end of this stage, furthermore, they’re eventually able to read works of adult level complexity. In Stage 4, individuals develop the ability to consider multiple viewpoints. Stage 4 corresponds to the high school years. And in developing this ability to comprehend multiple viewpoints, students are learning to handle increasingly difficult concepts in texts, for example chemistry and biology. Unlike in Stage 3, these older high school students can consider multiple viewpoints and indeed, the ability to consider multiple viewpoints is necessary for reading more difficult texts with multiple sets of facts, theories, and points of view. Stage 5 is construction and reconstruction. Here we’re talking about the college years. During Stage 5, readers are highly proficient and they’re able to read selectively. Thus, able to choose which portions of text they want to read. They don’t necessarily have to read a text cover to cover, but they can jump flexibly from middle, beginning, or end or some combination of texts to find the information they’re looking for. Furthermore, readers of this age use advanced cognitive processes involving analysis, synthesis, and prediction in order to construct meaning from text. A critical and important difference between Stage 5 and the earlier stages involves the ability to be critical of what one reads and to be able to muster and pull together arguments for or against different points of view. To see the difference among these last 3 stages of reading, consider the following examples. A Stage 3 reader would say, “Yes, I read it in a book. The author said it was true. Notice the lack of critical analysis in this assessment. A Stage 4 reader would say, “I don’t know. One of the authors I read said it was true, the other said it was not. I think there may be no true answers on this subject.” A Stage 5 reader would say something like, “There are different points of view on the matter. But one of the points of view seems to have the best evidence supporting it and I would tend to go along with that view.” Notice the Stage 5 reader has developed the ability to muster arguments in favor of a view and to analyze critically both points of view that are present. By progressing through the five stages, children ultimately develop the ability to become proficient readers. None of the above 14-6 Figurative Language I One of the major achievements in the school-age years Is a developing understanding of what we call figurative language. Figurative language refers to language that involves nonliteral or abstract expressions. A good example is the expression “It’s raining cats and dogs,” where we don’t mean that literally cats and dogs are raining from the sky. What we mean is that it’s raining hard, or it’s raining a lot. However, children don’t initially understand this sort of language, and it takes time for them to develop a grasp of these complex expressions. We’re going to go through a number of types of figurative language in the coming slides. These include metaphors, similes, hyperboles, idioms, irony and sarcasm, and proverbs. So, let’s start with metaphors. A metaphor is a type of figurative language expression that involves conveying similarity between two concepts or ideas by equating one with the other. So, for example, if someone says, “She’s a fish,” they don’t literally mean that someone is talking about a female fish. The probably mean that there’s a girl and she’s a really good swimmer and she can stay underwater for a long time; effectively that she acts like a fish, but the point is, this example of a metaphor involves equating a girl and a fish. Some other examples might be, “She’s a jewel,” which might mean she’s rare or she’s special, or, “She’s a rock,” meaning that she’s strong and sturdy like a rock. Notice, however, that I’m not using the words “like” and “as” in these expressions. I’m actually equating one thing with another thing without using “like” or “as.” This distinction is important because there’s another type of expression known as a simile. Similes involve the use of the words “like” or “as” to convey similarity or likeness. So if we said the expression, “like water off a duck’s back,” or “quiet as a mouse,” notice that these two expressions are conveying similarity between one thing and another thing through the words “like” and “as,” and this feature distinguishes similes from metaphors. In similes, we use the words “like” or “as” explicitly, whereas, in metaphors, we’re actually equating one thing with another thing without using the words “like” or “as.” “Ride like the wind” is an example of which of the following? Hyperbole Metaphor Simile Idiom Sarcasm 14-8 Achievements in Language Form There are a number of developments with respect to language form in the school-age years, that is, the form that language takes. Specifically, there are a number of what we call morphophonemic developments that occur. Morphophonemic development involves understanding of the changes in sounds in different morphemes. Consider the fact that when we pronounce the plural “s” marker to create plural forms of nouns, the pronunciation changes depending on the word that “s” marker is affixed to. So for example, the word “cat” becomes “cats” with an “s” sound, but the plural “s” marker when added to the word “dog” becomes “dogs” with a “z” sound. Moreover, the word “match” when we add the plural marker becomes “matches” with an “es” sound, an extra syllable. So children during the school-age years develop facility with this and other kinds of morphophonemic development. Another example is the change in vowel pronunciation when adding suffixes to words. So, consider how we say the word “decide.” When we add the suffix “-ion,” the pronunciation of the vowels in the root word changes substantially: “decision.” Notice how we went from “decide” to “decision” “I’ to “I.” Take the example of “sane” versus “sanity.” That “a” vowel in “sane” changes to an “a” vowel in “sanity,” or take the example of the word “ride.” That “I” vowel again changes to an “I” when we add the “- en” suffix as in “ridden.” Another example of a morphophonemic development that occurs is the use of stress for emphasis versus in compounds. This gives us distinctions like “hot dog” to express a dog that is uncomfortable in the heat versus “hotdog” which is a food, or “greenhouse” to express the color of a dwelling as opposed to “greenhouse” which is a compound word corresponding to a place where you would grow plants. There are other achievements in language form. For example, during the school-age years, children develop the ability to use derivational prefixes and suffixes. This goes back to our unit on derivational morphology, and during school-age years, children develop the ability and an understanding to use prefixes such as “un-“ to create words like “unhealthy,” “unrest,” or “undo,” “dis-“ as in “disregard” or “distrust,” “non-“ to mean not as in words like “nonstop” and “nonsensical.” Also, children gain the understanding of suffixes “-hood” as in words like “childhood” and “adulthood,” “-ment” as in “excitement,” “judgment,” and others, “-ly” as in “happily” and “merrily.” There are still other achievements in language form that occur in the school years. For example, during the school years, children achieve advanced grammatical structures that mark a literate, decontextualized language style. That is, children learn to use more complex grammar to express precise meanings and or avoid inferences that are unintended. So, for example, one such advanced grammatical structure is the use of passive voice as in the quote, “Mistakes were made,” where there’s no individual actively identified as having made the mistakes. Future perfect tense expresses a more complex or advanced time and setting as in “I will have arrived by 9 p.m.,” and there are many other forms of advanced grammatical structure. So, these achievements in language form occur continuously over the school years. The ability to say the plural marker “s” correctly in English for different words is an example of which of the following kinds of achievements? Morphophonemic development Acquisition of derivational morphology Acquisition of advanced grammatical structures None of the above 14-9 Skills in Persuasion During the school years, children grow substantially in their ability to use persuasion. Skills in persuasion develop both in persuasive writing as well as ability to persuade orally. Examples of persuasive writing could be letters to a congressperson or writing a cover letter for a job, or simply writing a note to a parent to convince them that they should buy the child something specific for Christmas. Persuasive writing and persuasive argumentation in general are challenging skills requiring awareness or what others believe and value as well as the ability to present ideas in a logical sequence. Let’s look at some of the skills that are involved with persuasion that children develop in order to advance their oral argumentation as well as their written argumentation. These include: the ability to adjust to different listeners and different individuals to whom the argument is being addressed based on age, authority and familiarity among other things; the ability to state advantages and reasons to comply with the request or argument; the ability to anticipate and reply to counterarguments that might be presented against the case being made; the ability to use positive techniques like politeness and bargaining as strategies to increase compliance; the ability to avoid negative strategies like whining or begging which can come across in a distracting, unadvantageous way; the ability to generate a large number and variety of arguments; and the ability to control the discourse assertively—to come across confidently and as if one is controlling the floor. So these various skills develop over the course of elementary school, and up into high school and even college. Which of the following is NOT developed during the school-age years? Ability to read Brown’s Stage V Development of figurative language Skill in persuasion 14-11 Language and Gender A rich area of development in the school-age years is the differentiation between females and males in how they use and approach the use of language in conversation. This is a rich topic that we don’t have time to go into in depth, but let’s just examine a few highlights in respect to language and gender. We’ve already alluded in previous units to gender differences in language development and expression, and gender differences only become greater in the school-age years in terms of conversational styles as well as vocabulary. To highlight some differences in the way that females and males approach conversation and vocabulary, let’s consider that it’s been shown that females tend to use a less assertive style including the use of more tag questions, for example, not saying just, “You like fish,” but, “You like fish, don’t you?” adding the tag question at the end, thereby weakening the statement. Females have also been shown to often use a rising intonation and to do so more frequently than males. Females might use polite requests more often than commands. Females have also been shown in some studies to use more politeness strategies than males, including: more use of compliments; use of apologies, such as, “I’m sorry, but would you mind turning down the volume?”; use of hedges that weaken the intensity of the statement—instead of saying, “I think that we should do X,” females might say, “I kind of think that we should do X,” which tends to weaken the intensity of the statement; females tend to use more boosters that add enthusiasm, so they might use words like “really” and “very” more often. There are also differences in how men and women act around each other in terms of conversation. Women have been shown to face their conversational partners more often and to make eye contact with them more frequently. Furthermore, some studies have shown that men change topics more often, while women tend to exhaust topics more thoroughly. Women also tend to use fillers like “uh-huh” and “yeah” more often. And there are many other points of difference between the genders that I encourage you to read up on on your own if this is something that interests you. Women tend to change topics more often, while men tend to exhaust topics thoroughly. True False 14-12 Language and Aging In this unit we’re considering language development not only across the school-age years, but also beyond, that is into adulthood and even later in adulthood. And with regard to the developmental aging process, there are a few things that we can say about older adults use and understanding of language. One thing is that, as adults age, they sometimes have trouble producing words and may experience something called the-tip- of-the-tongue phenomenon. In this phenomenon, a particular word is on the tip of someone’s tongue; it’s as if they know the word, they know something about it, they might even be able to say the first sound of the word, but they just can’t get it out—they just can’t figure out the word that’s intended. Another fact about the changing language system in the older adult years is that older adults tend to speak more slowly. This has been shown in a number of studies indicating that the rate of speech is actually slower for older adults and may become increasingly slow with increased age. Forgetting names becomes more common, and this may be related to the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon in some cases. Furthermore, older adults tend to have difficulty processing emotional expression in language, that is, affective prosody. And/or they may have difficulty with understanding word or sentence meanings. Across all points from the school-age years to beyond, there are different methods to language assessment, which can shed light on an individual’s language abilities. In the context of school-age language development, practitioners may often employ formative or summative assessments in evaluations. A formative evaluation focuses on the process of students’ language development. In contrast, summative evaluations assess the products and final outcomes of the language learning process. In summative evaluations, the goal is to see what the final product or outcome of the language learning process is. Formative and summative evaluations give complementary pictures of a student’s language abilities and how he or she might improve. A variety of tools are available for screenings, comprehensive evaluations, and progress monitoring in the school-age years and beyond. So in summary, let’s consider the overview of language development during the school- age years. We said that children gain language abilities through a shift in their input, focusing more on written texts and developing their reading skills. They develop an understanding of figurative language: idioms, proverbs, metaphors, similes, and so forth. Moreover, language form develops through a variety of morphophonemic changes, derivational morphology expansion, and the development of complex and advanced grammar. School-age children also begin to understand multiple meanings for words and sentences, as well as the fact that certain sentences and words may have ambiguity. During the school age years, individuals develop more complex narrative and more effective conversational abilities, including improved ability to use persuasions to get what they want. Furthermore, there is differentiation in vocabulary and conversational strategy by gender, so that the differences between the sexes only get bigger. We’ve now concluded our overview of language development during the school-age years. Formative evaluations assess the products and final outcomes of the language development process. True False 15-2 Bilingualism and English as a Second Language Our next topic is bilingualism. According to the 2000 US census, more than 1 in 5 people age 5 and over speak another language other than English at home. Some of these people are also proficient in English, perhaps because they learned two or more languages simultaneously or began to learn another language within a few years of being born. Other people might have learned English as a second language in school in the US or another country. Whatever the case, the United States is home to many people who acquire two or more languages during their lifetime. As such, we need to be familiar with terms such as bilingualism and multilingualism. Bilingualism refers to acquiring two first languages. Many children around the world acquire more than two first languages, a concept known as multilingualism. Simultaneous bilingualism involves acquiring two or more languages simultaneously. Perhaps the child is going to school and receiving instruction in one language while using another language at home at the same time. In contrast, sequential bilingualism involves learning two languages in succession. We can also distinguish situations in which English is learned as a second or other language. This is a situation in which an individual has already developed a solid foundation in a first language and is learning an additional language. Here we specifically focus on English as a second language, this concept can also be referred to as English as an additional language, EAL, or English as a foreign language, EFL. We often use the term English Language Learner, or ELL, to describe children with limited English proficiency who are learning to acquire and master English. It should be noted that there are some public support programs for ELLs. These include the no child left behind act and title III which is administered by the US department of Education. These programs are intended to support and ensure success for children with limited English proficiency in the United States. There have been controversies about whether children should be fully immersed in English in school or if instruction in another language should be permitted. Studies have shown that bilingual approaches, in which some amount of the individuals’ native language is presented alongside English instruction, are more effective for education than English immersion. And this is one area in which public policy has not caught up with research. English immersion programs have been shown to be more effective for educational outcomes than instruction programs which involve teaching in a student’s native language. True False 15-3 Introduction to Language Disorder A major topic in this unit of our course is language disorders. Language disorders refer to significant impairments in comprehension and/or production of language content, form, and/or use. Synonyms include language delay, language impairment, language disability, and language learning disability. All of these terms are used synonymously with language disorders. Language disorders are the most prevalent or common of communication impairments. An important concept in this unit is how to distinguish disorder from mere difference. The term disorder reflects underlying neurological impairment affecting language development. This impairment may be of known or unknown causes. In contrast, the term difference refers to normal variability in children in terms of their language development. And it’s often quite challenging to distinguish between mere differences and disorder. In this regard, cultural context is important. It may be the case that a child who is reticent, reluctant to talk, or has difficulty communicating, may belong to a culture in which children are meant to be seen and not heard or where there is some other prohibition on children expressing themselves. Therefore it can be difficult to differentiate language difference from disorder for this and many reasons. Language disorder and language disability are synonyms. True False 15-4 Common Language Difficulties Next we’re going to go through some areas where children often have language difficulties, in preschool, elementary school, and adolescence. So let’s start with language difficulties that are common in the preschool years. One area in which preschoolers may have difficulty is omission of age-appropriate grammatical inflections. For example, from our previous units you should know that the present progressive –ing ending is typically acquired between 19 and 28 months. Likewise, the plural s marker is typically acquired between 27 and 30 months, the possessive s between 31 and 34 months, and past tense regular and irregular verbs between 43 and 46 months. Thus, if children fail to show these age appropriate grammatical morphemes, it could be one sign manifesting a language disorder. Another area of language difficulty during preschool is showing shorter sentence length than expected, and you received guidelines previously on expected MLU across various age ranges. Children in preschool may also have difficulty with group conversations, either in initiating conversation, or showing age-appropriate conversation behaviors such as turn taking. Children in preschool may have difficulties relying on gesture for a longer time period than would be expected for children of the same age, which may indicate that they have difficulties with language form, content, or use. They may have difficulty initiating conversation with peers or difficulty sustaining turns in conversation. They may also show difficulty in comprehending complex directions and narratives. So any or all of these signs could be indicative of a language disorder requiring a comprehensive examination. Let’s now consider language difficulties that may show up in the elementary schoolyears. One is slower processing speed and comprehension. If a child is simply having difficulty understanding language, and the difficulty can’t be attribute to, for example, a bilingual or multilingual background, this could be indicative of a language disorder of some type. Children in elementary school may also have difficulty maintaining topics. They may have difficulty with conversational repairs, and in addition, they may have problems with figurative or non-literal language. For example, taking too literally certain figurative expressions. They may have problems with abstract language concepts or problems providing sufficient information to listeners. They may show poor cohesion of narratives or difficulty providing details that are relevant, on topic, and sufficiently clear. In terms of language difficulties during adolescence, we can point to poor or socially inappropriate use of language. Difficulty initiating conversation or showing immaturity during conversation. Problems organizing information. Frequent pauses, hesitations, or 15-6 Specific Language Impairment Let’s consider specific language impairment. As mentioned previously, specific language impairment is a significant language impairment of expressive or receptive language that can’t be attributed to another developmental difficulty. So, there’s no other cognitive disability or primary injury with which the language disorder is associated. Children with SLI have typical hearing skills, normal intelligence, and no obvious motor, neurological, or sensory disturbances like seizures or brain injury. Specific language impairment is typically diagnosed after the third birthday. Although signs of language difficulty might be present as early as the first or second years of life, toddler who are slow to talk are typically classified as late talkers instead of language impaired, and many late talkers overcome their slow start. So, although a child may have earlier been noted to have late language emergence, a formal diagnosis of SLI is usually not made until a child is three years old or more, and children with SLI have enduring language difficulty. So let’s consider some common traits in SLI. Although children with SLI show considerable individual differences in the domains of language affected and the severity of their disorder, they often share these five common traits. First, they’ll show some areas of language strength, but other areas of weakness. For instance, a child might have relatively intact grammatical skills but may exhibit poor pragmatic and semantic performance. As another example, a child might have deficits in the expression of language but still have relatively good comprehension. A second trait that’s common in SLI is a history of slow vocabulary development. On average, children with SLI produce their first words at age two years compared with about one year for nonimpaired children, and children with SLI continue to struggle with learning new words throughout the elementary school years. Moreover, when provided with the opportunity to learn a new word, children with SLI learn it more slowly than their nonimpaired peers do. Experts attribute these delays in vocabulary learning to a generalized deficit in processing linguistic information. Another common trait in SLI is that children show difficulties with grammatical production and comprehension. These difficulties begin in toddlerhood and continue through the school-age years. Children may omit grammatical morphemes like articles and auxiliaries. The may produce shorter utterances than is expected of their age. Moreover, they commonly use verbs less often than typically developing children do, and they’ll use fewer types of verbs than their typically developing peers will. Another trait that’s common among children with SLI is difficulties with adjusting academically. For example, children with SLI may have problems with social skills, behavior, and attention. They may have trouble with academically oriented skills like literacy and mathematics, so children with SLI are often behind in school and or show difficulties in a variety of attentional and social areas. Another common trait in SLI is that there might be long-term difficulties with language achievement. As many as 60% of children with SLI at kindergarten age continue to show language weakness into adolescence or adulthood. In terms of predicting relative language success, it should be noted that resolution of this disorder is most unlikely for children that have impairment in both expression and comprehension. Some children with SLI are affected only in expression or only in comprehension and not in the other domain, and those children that have difficulties in just one of these two areas are more likely to have resolution of their impairment later on. There are a number of causes and risk factors recognized for specific language impairment. For example, there’s evidence that SLI has a genetic component. 20-40% of children with SLI have a sibling or parent with a language disorder. It’s thought that biological or genetic factors probably predispose a child to have SLI, and that this can then interact unfavorably with factors in a child’s environment, ultimately leading to an incidence of specific language impairment. Children with specific language impairment were often late talkers but go on to have enduring language difficulty. True False 15-7 Autism Spectrum Disorders Autism spectrum disorders are a puzzling and increasingly prevalent type of disorder. Autism spectrum disorders are a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in individual’s social interaction, impairments in their verbal and non-verbal communication, and restricted and or repetitive behaviors. Children with autism typically display an inability to form relationships with peers or a lack of interest in engaging with others. They may have little awareness of others’ feelings or needs. These areas of impairment can dramatically affect an individual’s engagement with others and profoundly affect families and friends. Let’s talk about communication impairments in autism spectrum disorders. There are a number of areas of impairment. Let’s consider a few attributes. First, individuals with ASD may show echolalia. This is repetitions of vocalizations made by another person. In terms of other communication impairments, in individuals with ASD, there may be difficulty initiating or reciprocating interactions. For example, individuals with ASD may not pick up on turn taking cues, or they may have difficulty sustaining a conversation or reacting appropriately to another person. Individuals with ASD seldom engage in sustained joint attention with adults. This can be, potentially, a sign of ASD, and the lack of sustained joint attention can undermine that individual’s learning. Another area of particular difficulty in individuals who have ASD concerns problems with use of language in social situations. For example, when to say something and when not to say it. Individuals with ASD may also have difficulty with abstract or figurative language, taking language too literally or having difficulty understanding the meanings behind the words. In terms of causes and risk factors for ASD, ASD is believed to result from organic brain abnormality of some type. Interestingly, a seizure disorder is seen in 25% of children with autism. This suggests a commonality in the brain structures affected by ASD and those underlying seizures. In addition, extreme sensory deprivation, such as that experienced by Genie as discussed earlier in the course, can have profound impacts on social development and communication that are consistent with ASD. Understanding the causes of ASD and the best treatments are active in important areas of research. Which of the following are noted to be communication deficits in autism spectrum disorders? Difficulty initiating or reciprocating interactions Problems with use of language in social situations interventions to enhance the lives of people with intellectual disability is an active area of ongoing research. Most children with mild intellectual disabilities do not have language impairment. True False 15-9 Traumatic Brain Injury Traumatic brain injury is another cause of language disability or disorder. One of my colleagues has pointed out that brain tissue has the consistency of warm butter. As such, your brain is particularly prone to insult or injury—for example, blunt force trauma. This can lead to mild to severe brain injuries. Traumatic brain injury refers to damage or insult to brain tissue sometime after birth. In this sense, it’s distinguished from injuries that might have taken place before or around the time of birth. Mild injuries are characterized by concussion and loss of consciousness. Mild injuries are the most common type of brain injury; these have few lasting repercussions. In contrast, sever injury is accompanied by coma that lasts 6 hours or more. We can distinguish between closed head injury and open head injury. In closed head injury, brain matter is not exposed or penetrated. In open-head injuries, the brain matter is exposed through penetration. Open-head injuries tend to be more focal, whereas closed- head injuries can be more diffuse. An example of closed-head could be a child being a car accident where the car seat is thrown forward and backward with sudden deceleration, or another example of a closed-head injury would be if the child isshaken so that the child’s brain is damaged within the skull. In both closed- and open-head injuries, the immediate brain injury is often accompanied by secondary brain injuries. For example, there may be a lack of oxygen to the brain tissue, a condition known as anoxia. There also can be swelling of the brain tissue, or edema. And either lack of oxygen or swelling can lead to further brain injury. Most children with acquired brain injury have a history of normal language skills. In terms of understanding how traumatic brain injury can influence language disorders, it’s noteworthy that language disorders by TBI are influenced by several factors. For example, the severity of the injury is generally related to the severity of the language disorder that may result. In addition, the site of damage will also affect the nature of the language disorder. Damage to the temporal lobes will result in very different language impairments than damage to the frontal or parietal lobes in most cases. In addition, characteristics of a child before the injury are relevant to the language disorder experience later on, for example, their degree of language proficiency. Interestingly, pragmatics is the most commonly affected area of language following traumatic brain injury. Overall, TBI may affect cognitive, executive or behavioral skills; sustained or selective attention; retrieving or remembering information; planning and goal setting; and behavior monitoring or self-awareness. Moreover, children may be aggressive, irritable, depressed or anxious following a traumatic brain injury. All of these things may affect particularly language content or use. Among the causes for TBI, falls account for about 28% of traumatic brain injuries; motor vehicles account for about 20% of injuries; being struck by or against something, for example as might be caused by sport injuries, account for 19% of TBIs; and assaults account for about 11% of such cases. In the case of children, TBI often results from recreational or sports injuries, such as activities like riding horses, participating in football, or bicycling. So everyone, where your helmets and buckle your seatbelts, because they activities may mean the difference between having a language disorder or not. Among individuals with traumatic brain injuries, the most commonly affected area of language is syntax. True False 15-10 Hearing Loss No discussion of language disorders would be complete without considering issues related to identification and treatment of language disorders. Speech-language pathologists, or SLPs, are often the primary professionals involved in identifying and treating language disorders in children; although many other professionals may play important roles, for example clinical psychologists, special educators, pediatricians, audiologists, otorhinolaryngologists, and others. Diagnosing a language disorder requires a comprehensive language evaluation, and in previous units, we’ve named some of these and touched on the areas of language that they assess. The goal with identification and treatment is to develop plans that are tailored to a child’s weaknesses while accounting for their strengths. Over time, evidence-based treatment plans can often yield substantial improvement in areas of deficiency associated with various language disorders. We’ve now covered a lot of ground in understanding the development of oral language across the lifespan. I hope that you’ll carry with you this knowledge of the development of language form, content, and use as you venture out into the world with an enhanced appreciation for the sophistication, resilience, and occasional fragility of human language acquisition. Question 1 (1 point) Question 1 Unsaved Suppose a child says: “I forgot my cup.” “Those cups are mine.” “I wanna get that cup.” What is the total number of words (TNW) in this sample? 11 12 13 14 Question 2 (1 point) Question 2 Unsaved Suppose a child says: “I forgot my cup.” “Those cups are mine.” “I wanna get that cup.” What is the type-token ratio in this sample? Between 0.60 and 0.65 Between 0.65 and 0.70 Between 0.70 and 0.75 Between 0.75 and 0.80 Between 0.80 and 0.85 Question 3 (1 point) Question 3 Unsaved The ability to say the plural marker “s” correctly in English for different words is an example of which of the following kinds of achievements? Morphophonemic development Acquisition of derivational morphology Acquisition of advanced grammatical structures None of the above Question 4 (1 point) Question 4 Unsaved Formative evaluations assess the products and final outcomes of the language development process. True False Question 5 (1 point) Question 5 Unsaved What is the main reading achievement that is typically attained during (but not before) the high school years? Reading for the new Appreciating multiple viewpoints Reading works of adult length Reading for analysis, synthesis and prediction Question 6 (1 point) Question 6 Unsaved If a person says “I have cold feet” to mean they are hesitant to do something, then which of the following is this an example of? Hyperbole Metaphor Simile Idiom Sarcasm Question 7 (1 point) Question 7 Unsaved If someone says “Lawyers are as slimy as eels” then what kind of language device is this? Hyperbole Metaphor Simile Idiom Proverb Question 8 (1 point) Question 8 Unsaved Which of the following is NOT developed during the school-age years? II III IV V Question 15 (1 point) Question 15 Unsaved A clinician is involved in a naturalistic play session with a young child, eliciting a language sample. During the narrative descriptions, the child starts singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” True or false: The sung passages would be used to calculate MLU. True False Question 16 (1 point) Question 16 Unsaved The words “no”, “yeah” and “hi” would be used to calculate MLU. True False Question 17 (1 point) Question 17 Unsaved A child says “No! No! No!” to emphasize that she doesn’t want to share her doll. True or false: Each instance of the repeated word would be used to calculate MLU. True False Question 18 (1 point) Question 18 Unsaved How many morphemes are in “doghouse” for purposes of counting MLU? 0 1 2 3 Answer cannot be determined Question 19 (1 point) Question 19 Unsaved How many morphemes are in “going to” for purposes of counting MLU? 0 1 2 3 Answer cannot be determined Question 20 (1 point) Question 20 Unsaved How many morphemes are in “Martha’s” for purposes of counting MLU? 0 1 2 3 Answer cannot be determined Question 21 (1 point) Question 21 Unsaved How many morphemes are in “I’m” for purposes of counting MLU? 0 1 2 3 Answer cannot be determined Question 22 (1 point) Question 22 Unsaved How many morphemes are in “She’s gonna watch Joe’s dog” 5 6 7 8 Answer cannot be determined Question 23 (1 point) Question 23 Unsaved How many morphemes are in “It’s Sunny’s birthday today” 5 6 7 8 Answer cannot be determined Question 24 (1 point) Question 24 Unsaved What is the typical chronological age range for a child to achieve an MLU of 3.25? Approximately 27-30 months Approximately 31-34 months Approximately 35-38 months Categorical Scope Question 32 (1 point) Question 32 Unsaved Which of the following is not a Tier 2 principle in the Lexical Principles Framework? Conventionality Categorical Scope N3C Object scope Question 33 (1 point) Question 33 Unsaved In the Lexical Principles Framework, Tier 1 principles describe how vocabulary is refined, following initial acquisition. True False Question 34 (1 point) Question 34 Unsaved What is the name for the principle that children will select a nameless object as the recipient of a novel label? N3C Categorical scope Object scope Conventionality What is the name for the principle that children assume words to refer to categories of objects, not just the original item? Reference Extendibility Object scope Conventionality Question 36 (1 point) Question 36 Unsaved In the sentence “Nina made paper dolls in the park last Wednesday” what is the theme? Nina Paper dolls park Wednesday Question 37 (1 point) Question 37 Unsaved Which of the following permits a comprehensive evaluation of language? Macarthur-Bates CDI CELF-Preschool 2 IGDIs None of the above Question 38 (1 point) Question 38 Unsaved During the preschool years children begin to produce decontextualized language, which is a particularly important ability for success in school. True False Question 39 (1 point) Question 39 Unsaved Letters for which the name of the letter (such as “T”) contains the sound the letter makes (such as “tuh”) are learned earlier than letters for which this is not true. This is called the ________. own-name advantage letter-name pronunciation effect letter-order hypothesis consonant-order hypothesis Question 40 (1 point) Question 40 Unsaved Children’s attention is naturally drawn to printed words on a page. True False Question 41 (1 point) Question 41 Unsaved Phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, phoneme counting, and phoneme manipulation are all phonological awareness skills that are mastered in preschool. True False Question 42 (1 point) Question 42 Unsaved By the end of preschool age, children are about 50% intelligible. True False Question 43 (1 point) Question 43 Unsaved The preschool years are associated with the emergence of Brown’s stages I, II, III. True Question 51 (1 point) Question 51 Unsaved During which developmental reading stage does reading start to become automatic? Stage 0 Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4 Stage 5 Question 52 (1 point) Question 52 Unsaved With respect to literacy, children are beginning to develop alphabet knowledge, knowledge of letters of their name, and knowledge of the order of the letters during preschool years. True False Question 53 (1 point) Question 53 Unsaved What do we call the stage in which gradual refinement of the meaning and representation of a word happens? Engagement Deictic stage Fast mapping Slow mapping Question 54 (1 point) Question 54 Unsaved Which one the following cannot be considered as a method to improve children’s world learning? Shared storybook reading For adults to use emotion during reading Reading a book during a child’s sleep For adults to use exaggeration during reading Question 55 (1 point) Question 55 Unsaved Children master distal deictic terms like “there” and “that” sooner than proximal deictic terms words like “here” and “this”. True False Question 56 (1 point) Question 56 Unsaved Which one of the following is not among relational categories of words? Interrogatives term Temporal term Deictic terms Opposites Kinship terms Question 57 (1 point) Question 57 Unsaved Which one of the following measures is not sensitive to word repetition? Mean length of utterance (MLU) Number of different words (NDW) Type-token ratio (TTR) None of the above Question 58 (1 point) Question 58 Unsaved Toddlers learn thematic roles early on and link them to syntactic elements, often through using syntactic bootstrapping to interpret the meaning of new words. True False Question 59 (1 point) Question 59 Unsaved Which of one the following is not under the category of socioeconomic status (SES) that affects language development? Income Birth order Education Occupation Question 60 (1 point) Question 60 Unsaved Which one of the following tools uses picture naming, alliteration, and rhyming to monitor progress in a specific area of language development? Individual growth and development indicators (IGDIs) Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF) Macarthur Bates communicative development inventories (CDI) Both (a) and (b) Question 61 (1 point) Question 61 Unsaved What ability do children achieve in the school-age years that is the source of a major difference in their language development? Ability to read Ability to communicate fluently Ability to define objects