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

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

2. 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

3. 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

5. B. Social Development** • 27 mos—communicates desire and orders others around • 30 mos—demands caregiver’s attention, throws tantrums when needs are not understood

7. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. Preschoolers with larger vocabularies…

12. By 6 years of age…** • Many children have receptive vocabularies of up to 14,000 words

13. 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.”

14. 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

15. Neighborhood density:

16. Phonotactic Probability

17. 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)

18. We can help children learn new words faster by:

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

20. 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.)

21. 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?

22. E. Color Words** • By 4-5 years old, most preschoolers can name blue, red, yellow • More subtle color shades are acquired later

23. F. Spatial Words

24. 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

25. H. Temporal Words

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

27. 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 

28. Most 4-year olds…

29. By age 4….

30. B. Private and Socialized Speech** • Monologues: private speech-ch talk to selves • Socialized speech-acknowledge partners’ utterances, ↑ concern re: transmitting info

31. Presuppositional skills….

32. 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

33. 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

34. In solitary play…** • Child plays independently, even if other children are present

35. In parallel play…

36. In cooperative play…

37. 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)

38. Narratives are impacted by culture:

39. **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

42. According to Hulit et al. 2015:

43. Bliss, McCabe, & Mahecha :

44. 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

45. 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…)

46. 2. Presupposition

47. Presuppositional skills include use of:** • a. Anaphoric reference, or the role pronounsplay 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.

48. 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.”

50. 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)