Language Development in Toddlerhood: Milestones, Achievements, and Influences

1. Chapter 6 Toddlerhood: Exploring the World and Experimenting with Language

2. Focus Questions This chapter is designed to address the following questions: • What major language development milestones occur in toddlerhood? • What are toddlers’ achievements in language form, content, and use? • What factors influence toddlers’ individual achievements in language? • How do researchers and clinicians measure language development in toddlerhood?

3. Introduction • Toddlerhood: period between __ and __ yrs of age • Create matches between ______ and _______ in the world and the language that describes them

4. First Words • Pre-verbal to verbal communication • First word ~12 mos of age, on average • Words: • ______________________ • ______________________ • ______________________ • Each new word creates an entry in lexicon

5. First Words, cont • Lexical entries: series of symbols that comprise the word, sound of the word, meaning of the word, and word’s part of speech • 3 criteria for true word: • ____________________________________ • ____________________________________ • ____________________________________ __________________

6. First Words, cont • Phonetically-consistent form, or PCF: __________________________________ __________________________________ __________________________________ • Ex. “water” as “ahhhh” • Consistent sound structure, used in several contexts, rather than to name a single referent • Learn the value of adopting a stable pronunciation to communicate in a particular situation

7. Gestures • Precedes ______________ • Transition from __________ to ________ __________: • Referential gestures: _____________________ ______________________________________ • Ex. Holding a fist to the ear to indicate “telephone” • Share some properties of first true words • Use signals an impending transition from pre-linguistic to linguistic communication

8. Gestures, cont • Transition from 1-word stage to 2-word stage: • _____________________ • _____________________ • Begin to use _______________________, cease to combine two referential gestures

9. Achievements in Language Form, Content, and Use • 3 rule-governed domains: • Form • Content • Use • Toddlerhood: ______________________; ____________; ____________________ __________________________; _______ ______________________ WOW!

10. Norms for Phoneme Attainment • Sander’s (1972) customary ages of production and ages of mastery and speech sounds • Customary age of production: _________ __________________________________ __________________________________ • Age of mastery: _____________________ __________________________________

11. Phonological Processes • Place of articulation changes: ____________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ • Fronting: replace sounds produced farther back in the mouth with sounds produced farther forward in the mouth • Manner of articulation changes: _________ ___________________________________ ___________________________________

12. Phonological Perception • First position: ________________________ ____________________________________ • Only after toddlers enter the ____________ does a restructuring of lexical representations begin • More efficient storage of lexical items and allows toddlers to recognize words at the segmental rather than global level • Second position: ____________________ __________________________________

13. Grammatical Morphemes • Morpheme: ________________________ __________________________________ __________________ • Grammatical morphemes: _____________ ___________________________________ • Appear in speech between _______ mos of age, or after first ___words acquired • Roger Brown (1973): order and ages by which children master 14 grammatical morphemes

14. Combining Words to Make Longer Utterances • Two-word stage: _________________ _______________________________ Marks the true beginning of syntax (rules that govern the order of words in a child’s language) • Functions:____________, ________, _________, ___________

15. Combining Words to Make Longer Utterances Cont. • Brown’s Stages of Language Development: __________________________________ __________________________________ • Mean length of utterance (MLU): __________ _____________________________________ MLU= total number of morphemes/total number of utterances • As language develops, MLU increases systematically • General standard: calculate MLU using a language sample of 50 utterances or more

16. Sentence Forms • Telegraphic quality: omit key grammatical markers • _______________________________ _______________________________ • _______________________: • Yes/no questions • Wh-questions • Negatives

17. Achievements in Content • Novice to expert __________________ • Large gains in ___________________ ___________________

18. The Receptive and Expressive Lexicon • Receptive lexicon: _________________ ________________________________ • Expressive lexicon: ________________ ___________________________ • Vocabulary spurt, word spurt, naming explosion: _________________________ __________________________________ _____________________ • Children learn an average of ___new words per day!

19. Overextension • Overextension: children use words in an overly general manner • 3 major kinds of overextensions made by toddlers: • Categorical: _______________________________ ________________________ • Analogical: ________________________________ _________________________________________ • Relational: _________________________________ __________________________________________ • Overgeneralize about ____ of new words

20. Underextension • Underextension: _________________ _______________________________ • More common than overextensions

21. Overlap • Overextend in some circumstances and underextend in other circumstances • 3 possible explanations for why children make such errors (Gershkoff-Stowe, 2001): • ________________________ • Pragmatic error: ________________________ ______________________________________ _____________________________ • Retrieval error: _________________________ ______________________________________ _____________________

22. Social-Pragmatic Framework for Acquiring New Words • Follow another’s gaze and pointing gestures, engage in joint attention, and imitate actions by _____mos of age (Baldwin, 1995) • By ______ of age infants use social cues, including line-of-regard, gestures, voice direction, and body posture to make inferences about intentions underlying others’ actions (Baldwin & Baird, 1999)

23. How Do Toddlers Acquire Words So Quickly?: Fast Mapping • Fast mapping: _________________ _____________________________ • Lexical representation from brief exposure to the novel word and its referent

24. Conversational Skills • Initiate a _____________, sustain that topic for ___________, and then appropriately __________________________ • Difficulty keeping their _______________ in mind • Not yet proficient at realizing when they are _____________________________; unlikely to seek clarification

25. Theory to Practice • 1991 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) began a longitudinal Study of Early Child Care (SECC) • Data concerning cognitive, social, emotional, and language development from birth on • Indicators associated with positive caregiving behaviors: • _________________ • _________________ • __________________________ • ______________________________________ (NICHD ECCRN, 1996)

26. Theory to Practice, cont • Overall quality of child care, and ______________ in particular, was consistently but modestly related to toddlers’ cognitive and language outcomes at ___months, ___ months, and ____ months (NICHD, ECCRN, 2000)

27. Individual Differences in Language Development • Language development is not linear (e.g., Fenson et al., 2000; Scarborough, 2002) • _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________

28. Variation in Receptive and Expressive Language Development • ___________ generally precedes ___________ in language learning • Disparity between size of one’s receptive and expressive lexicon continue throughout ____________, ____________, and into _________

29. Effects of Gender • Girls produce ___________________ than boys and also produce more ___________ combinations than boys • Boys lag behind girls in their _________ ______________ • Differences in boys’ and girls’ maturation rates, particularly with respect to _________ ___________, may contribute to gender differences in language acquisition • ______ interact differently with boys and girls

30. Effects of Birth Order • Children’s language development might differ according to the order in which they are born • _________ children are more likely to have larger vocabularies in their second year, and to reach the 50-word mark sooner than their later-born counterparts • Possible that first born and only children receive a larger amount of _________ attention than children who are not first born

31. Effects of Socioeconomic Status • Some measure of __________, _________ ___________, or ______________ • Associated with a variety of health, cognitive, and socioemotional outcomes in children, with effects beginning prior to birth and continuing into adulthood (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002) • ____ is associated with toddlers’ receptive and expressive language development

32. Multicultural Focus • Exposing children to multiple languages • Laura Ann Pettito and colleagues (2001): “being exposed to two languages from birth, by itself, ________________________ to the normal process of human language acquisition” (p. 494) • Ability to detect __________________ _______________ regularities, in infancy, contributes to our capacity to acquire multiple languages simultaneously

33. How Researchers Measure Language Development • Methods for assessing children’s language development (McDaniel, McKee, & Smith, 1996) • ________________ • ________________ • ________________

34. Production Tasks • Produce, or say, the language targets under investigation • Unstructured or semi-structured: ___________________________ • Structured and systematic: ________ ______________________________ ______________________________

35. Naturalistic Observation • Researchers must consider: _________ __________________, ____________ __________________________, and the variety of ___________________ ___________________

36. Elicited Imitation • Natural ability to imitate others’ movements and speech sounds in order to gauge their underlying linguistic competence • ___________________________ and requests that the child ___________________________ ______________________________________ • In order for a child to successfully imitate a target, that target must be a part of the child’s _________________

37. Elicited Production • Produce __________________________ Jean Berko Gleason’s (1958) Wug Test • Investigate children’s acquisition of English morphemes, including the plural marker • Allomorphs (variants of a morpheme with the same meaning, but different sounds) of the morpheme –s • /z/, /s/, and /Iz/ • Presented children with a pseudo word and asked them to say what two of the same word would be called

38. Comprehension Tasks • Match pictures to target words and phrases or act out phrases that they hear an experimenter say • ____________________ • ____________________

39. Picture Selection Task • Present a _______________ and ask the child to choose the picture that corresponds to that target • Investigate children’s understanding of lexical items and syntactic constructions

40. Act Out Task • Present a child with a __________ and instruct the child to “act out” the sentences he or she hears in order to investigate the child’s _____________ _______________________________

41. How Clinicians Measure Language Development • Individuals with Disabilities Act of 2004 (IDEA; 2004): • Evaluation: _____________________________ __________; includes determination of the child’s status across developmental areas • Structured, standardized, and limited in duration • Assessment: ____________________________ _______________________________________ • Less formal; variety of methods • Encourage parent and caregiver participation

42. Evaluation and Assessment Tools • Limitations: • Limited role for family members in the assessment process • Limited allowance for individual variation across children due to standardization • Limited predictability of later language and communication abilities • Ecological validity: extent to which the data resulting from these tools can be ________________________, including the child’s home and daycare surroundings

43. Informal Language Screen • _____________ that allow clinicians and parents to check whether or not children exhibit each of the behaviors in question