PRESCHOOLERS: PRAGMATIC AND SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT (2-5 years)

PowerPoint Outline**• I. Developmental Milestones• II. Semantic Development• III. Pragmatic Development• IV. Social Skills Training• V. Emergent Literacy• VI. Successive Bilingual Acquisition• VII. Language Development Delays

I. DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES**• A. Cognitive Development

• 24 mos—follows simple verbal commands

• 27 mos—points to and names familiar pictures

• 36 months—gives “two” objects on request

B. Social Development**• 27 mos—

communicates desire and orders others around

• 30 mos—demands caregiver’s attention, throws tantrums when needs are not understood

C. Motor Development**• 3 yrs—walk on flat surfaces

• 3 yrs—runs well and climbs stairs

• 3 yrs—dresses self but doesn’t tie shoes

• 36 months—constructs a tower of 7-8 blocks

II. SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT**• A. Introduction

• Semantic development is closely related to development in motor, social, and cognitive abilities

• The better a child’s abilities in those areas, the more language he receives and practices

Preschoolers’ vocabularies grow fast:**

• 18-24 months: expressive vocab goes from 50 to 150-300 words

• By 36 mos of age, children will have expressive vocabularies of 900-1,000 words

• A 4-year old has 1500-1600 words

• A 5-year old has an expressive vocabulary of around 2100-2200 words

Preschoolers with larger vocabularies…

By 6 years of age…**

• Many children have receptive vocabularies of up to 14,000 words

• Ch learn words** exposed to in their environments

• 3-year old farm girl: “Mommy, I think we are having difficulty milking Flicker because her orifices are too small.”

B. Word Learning**• Fast mapping —a hypothetical proces; the

initial word-referent relationship or word “meaning” created by a child based on limited exposure to a word

• Fast mapping is affected by neighborhood density and phonotactic probability

Neighborhood density:

Phonotactic Probability

Children learn new words more quickly when these words…**

• Are composed of phonemes that the child can produce (“cow” vs. “synthesize”)

• Are object words as opposed to action words

• Are reduplicated syllables (mama)

We can help children learn new words faster by:

Let’s say you want to teach “pig;” you’d want to make sure it was the only new word in that

context**

C. Dimensional Words**• These words are

adjective pairs that indicate dimensions of objects

• E.g., big/little, wide/narrow

• Usually, big/little is the first pair to be mastered (3 yrs.)

D. Development of Relational Terms**• These terms express

relationships in domains such as color, location, size, family roles, and temporal sequences

• These terms can be hard because they are often relative

• For example, whose mom is the skinniest? Whose dad is the tallest?

E. Color Words**

• By 4-5 years old, most preschoolers can name blue, red, yellow

• More subtle color shades are acquired later

F. Spatial Words

G. Kinship Words**

• The first ones to develop usually refer to immediate family—mother, father, sister, brother

• Then, children gradually learn other layers of relatives

H. Temporal Words

If children don’t understand the meaning of a temporal term…

III. PRAGMATIC DEVELOPMENT**• A. Introduction

• Children are increasing in their Theory of Mind (TOM) skills

• TOM: realizing that others have their own thoughts and perspectives

• Around age 3, kids talk a lot; between ages 3-4, it seems nonstop

Most 4-year olds…

By age 4….

B. Private and Socialized Speech**• Monologues: private speech-ch talk to selves

• Socialized speech-acknowledge partners’ utterances, ↑ concern re: transmitting info

Presuppositional skills….

C. Discourse Skills**• Discourse, or

conversation, is a series of consecutive utterances shared by at least 2 people

• Cohesion refers to the relatedness of successive utterances in discourse

D. Play Behavior**• In symbolic play, the child allows one

thing to represent another

• A kleenex may represent a doll’s blanket

• A stick may represent a gun

• Symbolic play is closely associated to the development of words, which are symbols which stand for things

In solitary play…**

• Child plays independently, even if other children are present

In parallel play…

In cooperative play…

E. Preschoolers’ Storytelling**• Preschoolers ↑ in ability to tell stories

or narratives

• Oral narratives are an uninterrupted stream of language modified by the speaker to capture and hold the listener’s interest

• Narratives are decontextualized monologues (language doesn’t center on some immediate experience within the context)

Narratives are impacted by culture:

• **The setting provides the context and characters

• The goal provides the characters’ motivation

• The episode describes the events related to the goal

• The outcome provides the conclusion and states whether or not the goal was attained

According to Hulit et al. 2015:

Bliss, McCabe, & Mahecha :

F. Narrative Development** (p. 228)

•From 3-5 years old, children use temporal or time-based sequences where events follow a logical sequence

↑Around 3 years, children use centering sequences

↑•2-year olds use centering heaps, sets of unrelated statements about a topic

G. Behaviors that contribute to cohesion:**

• 1. Topic Introduction —young preschoolers physically intro topics (e.g., pointing, putting an object in someone’s hand)

• Intro topics with listener’s name (Mommy…)

2. Presupposition

Presuppositional skills include use of:**

• a. Anaphoric reference, or the role pronouns play in referring back to words that occurred just prior to them

• My mom called, and she asked me to come home.

• I saw Jason, and he said to tell you hello.

Because of anaphoric reference, you would not say things like:**

• “The Avengers movie was awesome, and I’m so glad I got to see this movie.”

• Scarlett Johanssen was amazing, and Scarlett is such a good actress.”

• c. Grammatical ellipsis, a device speakers use to eliminate info listeners already know**

• Emerges gradually after 3, may not be mastered until school age

• Examples: “I am so glad it’s out!” (referring to a new movie that everyone knows about)

• “Are we there yet?” (assumes everyone knows where there is)

3. Turntaking**• Some researchers say that even preschoolers rarely

interrupt their partners because they are sensitive to the need for turntaking during conversation

• 2-3 year olds typically have 1-2 turns per topic

• Older preschoolers may have up to 5 turns per topic

4. Topic maintenance

Aspects of topic maintenance include:

IV. SOCIAL SKILLS TRAINING**

• ASHA Schools Conference: Pamela Wiley

• Said we need to begin early—even in preschool

• Problems in social skills can lead to negative consequences that can last a lifetime

Wiley—possible consequences of poor social skills:

Wiley—Skill steps:

V. EMERGENT LITERACY**• One way to enhance preschoolers’ emergent

literacy skills is through print referencing

• This occurs when an adult uses verbal and nonverbal cues to direct a child to the features of written language during shared storybook reading

A recent tweet (summer 2015 @UberFacts):

When adults are reading with children, they can:

If young children are fairly hyper and don’t sit well during book reading:**

• Be exciting and dramatic when you read—use different funny voices

• Use books with manipulable parts like flaps, buttons

• Short books that have lots of pictures

The iPad can work well…***• Some apps are very engaging and interactive

• I have successfully used these in my job in the schools with ages 3-18 years

• The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Miss Spider’s Tea Party, The Monster at the End of this Book

Print awareness:

• Young ch develop interest in, appreciation for print

• 1. Recognize: print exists in environment and in books

• 2. Develop understanding of print conventions (e.g., left to right, top to bottom)

• 3. Learn language that describes print (e.g., letters, words)

• 4. Understand that print conveys meaning and has a specific function

Research has shown that…

Youtube video—Angelo & me• Fostering Print Awareness in Low Income

Children

• Youtube channel Celeste Roseberry

We can also work on phonological awareness….**

• Kruse, L.G., Spencer, T.D., Olszewski, A., & Goldstein, H. (2015). Small groups, big gains: Efficacy of a Tier 2 phonological awareness intervention with preschoolers with early literacy deficits. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 24, 189-205.

This study…**

• Evaluated the efficacy of a phonological awareness intervention designed for Tier 2 instruction delivered to small groups of preschoolers

• They saw groups of low-income preschool children 3-4 days a week for 10 minute sessions (28-36 lessons total)

They found that:

VI. SUCCESSIVE BILINGUAL ACQUISITION**

• Many children learn the first language (L1) at home and the second language (L2) after age 3 with peers or at school

• Children who begin learning English at age 5 master comprehension before expression

• L1 forms the foundation for L2

• L2 learning mirrors L1 learning

VII. LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT DELAYS

Homelessness can be a factor:

PowerPoint Outline**• I. Developmental Milestones• II. Semantic Development• III. Pragmatic Development• IV. Social Skills Training• V. Emergent Literacy• VI. Successive Bilingual Acquisition• VII. Language Development Delays