EARLY LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT:
TODDLERS
(12-24 mos.)
We need to know about normal milestones in all areas…**
• Often, when a young child has a delay
or challenge (language delay, mental
retardation, autism spectrum), the
speech pathologist is the first one to
see him
• Thus, we need to know “basics” of
development in all areas—cognitive,
social, motor
• If we see problems in any of these
areas, we can immediately refer to
appropriate professionals and the child
can receive early intervention
We need to know typical
language milestones
• For clinical purposes
• And for the PRAXIS!
Sample PRAXIS questions (not on our exam )
• Specifier + state + attribute + object
• Which of the following utterances can be
analyzed according to the syntactic structure
above?
•
•
•
•
•
A. This is a pretty doll
B. Daddy talked to me
C. He is shorter than you
D. This goes with me
E. Mommy gave me a hug
Another one (are we having fun yet?)
• You are seeing a young child with an expressive
language delay. The child is t a stage of languge
acquisition in which he has command of
singular nouns, regular plurals, “in,” and “on.”
According to Brown’s stages, which should you
focus on next in treatment?
• A. Adverbial phrases
• B. Reflexive pronouns
• C. Complex sentences
• D. Possessive pronouns
• E. Compound sentences
When working with a 10-month old infant
on developing object permanence, the SLP
can most appropriately have the infant:
•
•
•
•
A. Play pat-a-cake
B. Visually follow a moving toy across the floor
C. Play peek-a-boo
D. Visually locate a musical toy by using its
sound
• E. Play with a pull toy
I. DEVELOPMENT IN RELATED DOMAINS
(McLaughlin Development Milestones pp. 219-220—lecture only)
• A. Social Development
B. Motor Developments
Motor developments continued
C. Cognitive Developments
Cognitive developments continued
II. FIRST WORDS**
• First word around 12
mos. of age; may
emerge 8-16 mos.
• With production of first
true words,
toddlers→locutionary
period.
To qualify as a true word:**
• It needs to occur with consistency in a given context
in apparent response to an identifiable stimulus
• It should be produced consistently in the presence of
the same person, object, or event
• It must bear some phonetic resemblance to a
conventional adult word; it can be an approximation
of a real adult word
In first words…**
• Front consonants /p, b, d, t, m, n/ are the
most common
• These children use simple syllable
patterns (e.g., CV, VC, CVCV)
There is rapid vocabulary growth:
Youtube
• Toddler Tries to Argue Like an Adult
• This child is 20 months old
According to Berko Gleason & Ratner 2013:
If the child does not have a major language
growth spurt between 18-24 months of
age…
Therapy implication:
Remember that:
Children “know” words at 5 levels:**
• 1.
Referential level: word refers to a particular
object, event, or relationship (e.g., “dog”--family
dog Angel)
• 2. Extended level: word extends to other
examples (e.g., “dog” refers to Angel and other
dogs in neighborhood)
Classes of First Words:**
• Nouns are prominent; may be 50%
or more of a toddler’s lexicon
• Usually these nouns have been
frequently involved in the
• toddler’s interaction with others
• Mark McKibbin’s
nouns: (not on test)
Toddlers often use reflexive
relations:**
• **For the test, please be sure to know
the chart at the bottom of p. 237
(Table 6-3)
• Reflexive relations are early words that
indicate the state of objects
These reflexive relations include:
• !”
Reflexive relations also include:
3 types of relational words (that express relationships
among objects): **
• Attribution: express individual characteristics.
E.g., tall, clean, dirty, hot, funny.
• Action: actions associated with objects (e.g.,
eat, throw, kiss)
• Location: words that occur in response to the
locations of objects or directions of their
movement (e.g., up, outside, in)
Pages 239-242**
• Are not on the exam—yay!
III. COMBINING WORDS, MEANING, AND
FUNCTIONS**
• Pages 244-the middle of 248 are not on the
exam; pick up your reading in the middle of
page 248 where it says Semantic-Syntactic
Considerations
A. Introduction
Combining words is significant because it indicates
that toddlers:
Characteristics of true 2-word utterances:
B. Semantic-Syntactic
Considerations**
• Semantic-syntactic rules emphasize that meaning
precedes and influences form
• The meaning most frequently expressed by
toddlers in two-word utterances increasingly
shifts to action
• Please know Table 6-5 on the bottom of page
249—Brown’s prevalent semantic relations in 2word utterances (this is always on the PRAXIS!)
You only have to know the ones that have an * on
the next slide
Semantic Relations (only the ones with an * are on the
test)**
• Agent + action*
• Action + object*
• Agent + object
Mommy kiss
Pet doggy
Cocoa bone (Cocoa is
• Demonstrative + entity*
That spoon
Cereal bowl (the
• Entity + locative*
• Action + locative
• Possesser + possession*
• Attribute + entity*
associated with the
bone; this is not
possessive)
cereal is in the bowl)
Put car
Mark toy
Yummy snack
IV. DEVELOPMENT IN PRAGMATICS
• A. Introduction
B. Dore’s Primitive Speech Acts**
• (Halliday’s functions on pp. 223-top of 225 are
not on Test 2, but I encourage you to review
them before the PRAXIS)
• A primitive speech act (PSA) is a distinctive
vocalization or word, often accompanied by a
gesture, to communicate intentions
• Table 6-1 on p. 224—you just have to know
the lecture notes
Dore’s Primitive Speech Acts (p. 224)**
• Labeling (“Rice Krispies” when cereal box is taken
out)
• Greeting, or addressing people when they appear
(“Hi, Aunt Celeste”)
• Calling, or gaining another’s attention (child shouts
“Mommy” from his swing)
• Repeating, or reproducing part or all of an
utterance (echoes Mom’s utterance “oh *&^%!” when
she stubs her toe)
Dore (continued)
Dore continued
C. Developing Dialogue**
1. Presupposition—refers to speakers’ ability
to judge how much their listeners might
know about the subject being introduced and
to adapt their utterances accordingly.
Most conversations between toddlers and
caregivers are about the here-and-now, so
presuppositional skills are not much needed.
2. Turn-taking
For example,**
• Hey, get this. You know that PayLess Shoe
store on Greenback where we love to get
those $15.99 pairs of shoes?
• Well, they closed! Now the only one even
remotely nearby is at Arden Fair mall.
Conversations with toddlers…**
• Develop out of things
that have just engaged
their attention.
• “Drive car!”
• Usually dialogue
follows.
V. TODDLERS’ TOOLS FOR LANGUAGE
DEVELOPMENT
• A. Selective Imitation
B. Interrogative Utterances**
• Request for
appropriate word
• “What’s that?”
C. Hypothesis Testing
VI. CAREGIVERS’ TOOLS FOR THEIR
TODDLERS’ LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT**
• We previously discussed “motherese,” also
called CDS (child-directed speech)
• Caregivers often use prompts, which evoke
toddler utterances
Types of Prompts Include:**
• 1. Open-ended questions, e.g. “What
happens if we don’t feed the dog?”
• 2. Wh-constituent questions, which require
toddlers to recall associated information
from their experience and formulate a
specific response. For example, “What does
a policeman do?”
Youtube
• I poo in my pants funny toddler at Disney
World
Caregivers can also use:
For example:**
• Expansion:
• Mark: Cocoa eat dog chow.
• Mommy: Yes, Cocoa eats her
dog chow.
• Extension:
• Mark: Cocoa eat dog chow.
• Mommy: Yes, Cocoa eats her
dog chow so she can be strong
and healthy.
To increase expressive language
skills….**
• Talking with the child as much as possible is very
helpful
• Extensions are quite powerful:
• Child: “Kitty!”
• Adult: “Yes, there is a black kitty sitting on the
sidewalk.”
When we use extensions…
• A terrific recent article about working with
parents to increase language skills in young
children:**
• Roberts & Kaiser 2011 August (American Journal
of Speech-Language Pathology, 20, 180-199)
• “The Effectiveness of Parent-Implemented
Language Interventions: A Meta-Analysis”
Roberts & Kaiser found:
In terms of books with toddlers…
Hulit, Fahey, & Howard 2015—summary of
new research on child-directed speech:
Hulit et al 2015 continued:
The more TV in a ch’s day…
VII. INTERVENTION WITH TODDLERS
WHOSE LANGUAGE IS DELAYED**
• We can use direct intervention, where the
child is seen by the speech pathologist
• We can also use indirect intervention, where
we train caregivers such as parents and
preschool teachers to stimulate children’s
language development
Several specific techniques:**
• Incidental teaching: adult
carefully observes the child,
takes advantage of spontaneous
teachable moments
• E.g. , if the child points to a cat,
adult can say “Look, there is a
gray cat. I wonder why she looks
so funny?”
• Ask open-ended and topic-continuing questions
rather than closed questions**
• Closed question: “Do you want milk?”
• Open-ended question: “What would you like to
drink?”
• When the child says something, respond in a topiccontinuing way
• Child: I saw Sesame Street
• Teacher: Oh, that’s nice. (NO)
• Teacher: Wow! What happened on Sesame Street?
(YES)
Use communicative temptations:
Paul & Norbury, 2012—suggestions
for communicative temptations:
• (Paul & Norbury
continued)
Most of all…**
• Language
develops
optimally when
children get
plenty of
attention
• Attention is the
greatest
reinforcer of all