Communication
Development from Birth to
Two Years
Chapter 4
Reception
•  1 month
–  2.5 second memory for objects
–  Discriminate among speech sounds
•  4 months
–  5-7 second memory
•  6.5 months
–  Discriminate strings of syllables
–  Imitate intonational patterns
•  9 months
–  Distinguish language specific speech sounds
(ultimate meaning interpreted from how something is said)
Motherese
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Higher pitch level with extremes
Longer pauses
Slower rate
Shorter simpler utterances
Exaggerated facial expressions
More utterance repetitions
Loudness variation
1
Joint Reference
1.  4-6 weeks - puts object in front of child
with “look” (begins to respond to tone)
2.  7 months - child points to object of
interest (begins to reach)
3.  8-12 months - gestures and vocalizations
combined to indicate object
4.  12 months - child controls topic (names
object and event)
Expression
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Reflexive cries and noises
Comfort and pleasure sounds
Transitional babbling
Reduplicated babbling (echolalia)
Variegated babbling/jargon
Protowords (vocables, phonetically
consistent forms, performatives)
Conversation
•  Perlocution (birth-8 months)unintentional and nonverbal
•  Illocution (8-12 months)- intentional but
nonverbal
•  Locution (beyond 1 year) - intentional
and verbal
2
Mean Length of Utterance
Stage
Description
Age
MLU
1
Semantic roles and
grammatical relations
12-26 1.0-2.0
2
Grammatical morphemes and
modulation of meaning
27-30 2.0-2.5
0
3
Modalities of simple sentence
31-34 2.5-3.0
4
Embedding of sentences
35-40 3.0-3.7
5
5
Coordination of simple
sentences and propositional
relations
41-46 3.75-4.
50
Brown’s (1973) Stages of Syntactic Development
Stage 1 - Words to
Combinations of Words
Early 1 (1-1.5 MLU; 12-22 mos)
•  1st word (12 months)
–  Reference to something important to them
–  Usually one syllable (“up”), or one syllable
repeated (“mama”)
–  Usually CV, VC, or CVCV
3
“dog”
Overgeneralization
“apple”
Undergeneralization
Semantic Feature Hypothesis
•  Clark, 1975
•  Classified based on percepts (size, shape) •  Interpretation of each word is based on a
collection of semantic features
•  Nothing else possesses all of the features
“dog”
–  Animal, furry, four legs, wet nose, tail, barks
4
Functional Core Hypothesis
•  Nelson (1974)
•  Classified based on functions or actions
of things
•  Animate/inanimate; can be eaten, etc.
“dog”
–  animate, can eat, but may not be eaten,
can bark but can’t talk
Prototype Hypothesis
•  Bowerman (1978)
•  Child relies on both perceptual features
and functions in developing meaning
•  Select model (prototype) which best
represents word for comparison
•  Continues throughout childhood into
adulthood
http://myfwc.com/marine/fish/atlspade.jpg
http://www.madlantern.com/clipart/clips/Animals1/whale.gif
First Words (Bloom, 1973)
•  Substantive words - –  Classes with perceptual of functional features in
common
–  “mama”, “doggie”; “kitty”
–  Further divided based on action
–  Agents and objects
•  Relational words
–  Actions or states of being
–  “allgone”, “bye-bye”, “stop”, “no”, “more”
5
First Words (Nelson, 1973)
•
First 50 words
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
General nominals Specific nominals Action words
Modifiers Personal-social words
Function words
(7 or 14%) (25-26 or 51%)
(6-7 or 13%)
(4-5 or 9%)
(4 or 8%)
(2 or 4%)
Use/Function
•  communicative functions (Halliday, 1975)/
primitive speech acts (Dore, 1975)
•  Child uses single word to accomplish great
deal
“cookie” - can be used to mean
–  I want one
–  That’s not one (in response to sugar wafer)
–  I don’t want one
–  Etc.
Use/Function
•  communicative
functions (Halliday,
1975)
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Interacting
Regulatory
Personal
Heuristic
Instrumental
Imagine (pretend)
Informative/labeling
•  primitive speech acts
(Dore, 1975)
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Labeling
Answering
Requesting an action
Requesting an answer
Calling Greeting Protesting
Repeating/Imitating
Practicing
6
Early Skills
•  Presuppositions –  Assumption regarding what a listener
already knows
–  Begins at single word level and continues
through school age
•  Conversational Turn-Taking
–  Begins before first word with games/rituals
(“peek-a-boo”)
Late 1 (1.5-2 MLU; 22-26 mos)
•  Refine 2 word utterances
–  First appears around 18 months
–  Considered on three levels
•  Syntactic
•  Semantic
•  Pragmatic
Syntax
•  Pivot-Open Grammar (Braine, 1963)
–  “that ball”, “that cookie”, “that mama”
•  Communicative Context (Bloom, 1973)
–  One must consider context to determine
how utterance is being used
7
Semantics •  As in 1 word utterances, interpretation
remains difficult (always depends on context)
•  Begins to use syntax to aid meaning
–  Talk about things
–  Where they are
–  What actions they perform
–  What actions are performed on them
–  Who creates these actions
Pragmatics
•  To previous functions child adds
–  Pragmatic function - uses language to get
things done
–  Mathetic function - used to learn about self
and world
–  Informative function - give new information
to others
Pragmatics
•
Basic rules of conversation
1.  Gain partners attention before speaking
2.  Listen before speaking
3.  Take turns
8
Emerging Language Factors
•  Strong biological drive to learn
language
•  Emergence of language closely tied to
cognitive development
•  Must have language models to acquire
language
Caregivers
•  Facilitate overall language (and
vocabulary) development
–  Expands - expands into complete form
“Daddy car” “Yes, that’s Daddy’s car.”
–  Extends - add new semantic information
“Daddy car”
“Yes, Daddy has a red
car.”
Review Questions
•  Complete all
•  Consider carefully
–  4, 6, 7, 8, 12, 15, 19
9