Kevin Durkin

Social interaction and language acquisition: Motherese help you

One of the distinctive features of speech addressed to young children is the deviant use of proper names. In a cross-sectional observational study of mother-infant interactions (with children aged 12, 18 and 24 months), this paper investigates the frequency and functions of this aspect of language input. No differences due to age of child were found, indicating that the phenomenon is not sensitive to the linguistic development of the addressee. The most common functions of name usage are identified as Attention-Orienting and Instruction to Act. We argue that this familiar modification reflects communicative rather than pedagogical (linguistic- instruction) purposes on the part of the parent. We present examples which suggest that the modification, which is present before the addressee reaches the two-word stage, influences the early grammatical constructions of the child. We conclude that the relationship between the contingencies of early social interaction and language acquisition is multi dimensional, and not ubiquitously designed to facilitate language learn ing perse.

Aspects of late language acquisition: school children's use and comprehension of prepositions

The study of late language development in normal children promises to reveal much about the residual obstacles to language mastery, and is therefore a central issue for developmental psycholinguists. Findings of a series of studies of schoolchildrens use and comprehension of common prepositions are reported. Particular attention is paid to the acquisition of between, but a variety of developments in the comprehension of in front of, behind, above, below, and near are also discussed. It is shown that the acquisition of prepositions is a protracted affair, continuing at least through the infant school years. Some theoretical and practical implications of the study of late language development are noted.

CHILDREN'S ACCOUNTS OF SEX-ROLE STEREOTYPES IN TELEVISION

Despite widespread concern about the possibly deleterious effects of television and sex-role stereotypes upon young viewers, little research has been conducted to investigate how children perceive stereotypes in the medium. In this study, seventeen children aged 4½ and 9½ are interviewed individually and asked to discuss features of a series of highly stereotyped male and female behaviors shown on television. The children display considerable knowledge of sex-role conventions and reveal clear ability to relate this to their accounts of the excerpts presented. Children are able to infer feelings and motives appropriately, and offer plausible accounts of “off-screen” behavior by using their existing sex-role knowledge. The findings are discussed with reference to developmental work in script theory, and it is stressed that television “effects” upon the young are best understood in the context of models of developing social understanding.

The semantic focus of maternal speech: a comment on Ninio & Bruner (1978).

Ninio & Bruner (1978) added an important dimension to the study of early lexical acquisition by drawing attention to the dialogue-like nature of the mother-child interactions where presumably much language-learning takes place. The authors pointed to the well-established findings that much of the childs early speech consists of names for people and objects (Leopold 1949, Werner & Kaplan 1963, Nelson 1973, Greenfield & Smith 1976). They went on to show that in one familiar type of parent–child interaction, joint picture-book reading, labels are used extensively by the adult and are inserted skilfully into a structured interactional sequence that has the texture of a dialogue (Ninio & Bruner 1978: 6). This dialogue, they suggested, ‘seems… to be a format well suited to the teaching of labelling’ (1978: 12). Subsequent research has also been interpreted as pointing to the teaching potential of joint picture-book reading (Wheeler 1983, Ninio 1983) and the opportunities it affords for situation-specific routines (Snow & Goldfield 1983).

Picture-book reading with a child with severe learning disability: a case study

Interactions between parent and child in joint picture-book reading have received considerable interest in studies of normal language acquisition. Less attention has been paid to the language-disabled child in this context. This single case study looks at the interaction between a severely impaired language learner and his professional caregiver during an episode of joint book reading. An examination is made of the nature of the interaction, the incidence of labelling, and the types of clarification requests used. It is shown that this context provides a framework within which a dialogue is developed between child and adult, with both contributing to the initiation of topics. These are then extended by means ofpredominantly open-ended question forms on the part of the caregiver. Future case studies are recom mended of individuals with different levels of language disorder, and the implications for practice are discussed.

Challenging Traditional Sex Role Stereotypes in Careers Education Broadcasts: The Reactions of Young Secondary School Pupils.

Abstract The ways in which television presents images of male and female roles to the young have recently been subjected to much scrutiny and criticism. Educational television has the scope to contribute to changes in the balance of sex role portrayal but little is known of the likely effects of modifications. This paper reports an experimental study of young secondary school pupils’ reactions to careers education materials in which men and women are shown in occupations traditionally associated with the opposite sex. Children viewing counter‐stereotyped programmes are found to be no less stereotyped in their career beliefs than peers viewing a ‘traditional’ programme or controls who view no programme. The results are discussed in terms of the resilience of sex role and career beliefs in early adolescence and it is concluded that intervention attempts will need to be more extensive and more protracted.

Developmental changes in the comprehension of near

Abstract Childrens understanding and use of proximity propositions have received less attention from developmental psycholinguists than have their acquisition of other relational terms. This paper takes note of the imprecise and relativistic meaning of the common preposition near, and shows that there are subtle but interesting developments in the comprehension of the term during the years 3 to 6. Earlier work has revealed that young children frequently respond to instructions with near by placing objects in contact with each other. The present paper considers whether the development from this strategy is dichotomous (contact vs. non‐contact) or gradualistic (with non‐contact responses gradually increasing in distance as the child grows older). An experimental test with 47 3‐6 year olds confirms that contact responses decrease in frequency with age, and significant between‐group differences in mean distance of placements are taken as supporting a modified gradualistic account of the developments. These f...

What's in a context? A critical review

it is despite or because of these aspects that the text succeeds overall in encapsulating very effectively much of the current state of play in developmental psycholinguistics. Child Language provides a crisp, informed and stimulating account of its subject matter, and is a particularly welcome addition to the Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics series. It will be very useful as teaching material, as well as offering a skilful overview for the benefit of researchers in adjacent areas. Any overview faces the problems of selectivity, and an overview in this field faces the

Counting on you but depending on me: parent-child interaction and number-word acquisition

children in to the deductive mode. The results indicated that by the age of 8 years children show some ability to take account of the deductive/empirical distinction in their production of language. Also, the adult data from the questionnaire based on this experiment suggest a possible explanation for the children’s difficulty in Experiment 1: the empirical/deductive distinction may frequently be conveyed contextually rather than purely linguistically.

Towards an understanding of children's comprehension of everyday spatial terms in musical and mathematical contexts

may have in the process of acquisition. Since blind children do not have access to visual information, it can be predicted that their acquisition of speech sounds will be different from those of sighted children. An analysis was carried out of the substitutions in initial consonants in sighted and blind children aged between 0;9 and 2;3. The results show that a different pattern of substitutions emerges which is a direct result of the absence or presence of visual information.