Child and Adolescent Development

1. LANGUAGE
DEVELOPMENT
“ E V E R Y L A N G U A G E D E V E L O P M E N T I S
C R I T I C A L T O S U C C E S S I N L AT E R L I F E . ”

2. LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• When do infants first hear and make
speech sounds?
• When do children start to talk? How do
they learn word meanings?
• How do young children learn grammar?
• How well do youngsters communicate?

3. DEFINITION
• Language development
It is the process by which children come to understand
and communicate language during early childhood.

4. TWO MAIN AREAS OF LANGUAGE
• Receptive language (understanding): Comprehension of
language.
• Expressive language (using language): The use of language
through speech, sign or alternative forms of communication to
communicate wants, needs, thoughts, and ideas.

5. PERCEIVING SPEECH
• Newborn’s left brain hemisphere – sensitive to language
• Phonemes – unique sounds to create words; the basic building
blocks of language
– Ex: Sound of b and p (“ buh” and “puh”)
Impact of Language Exposure
• Not all language have the same set of phonemes.
• Infants can distinguish phonemes that are not used in their native language.
• They begin to notice only phonemes important to their language as they
grow and get exposed to a particular language.

6. PERCEIVING SPEECH
Identifying Words
• Infants pay attention to words repeated in different sentences. (7- to 8-month-
old)
• Infants pay more attention to stressed syllables than unstressed syllables.
• Infants notice syllables that go together frequently.
• Infants identify words through their knowledge of how sounds are used in their
language.
• Infants only recognize words as a distinct configuration of sounds.
• Infants relies on familiar function words. (like a, an, and the)
• Infant-directed speech a.k.a. motherese – speech that adults use with infants
that is slow and has exaggerated changes in pitch and volume; it is thought to
aid in language acquisition
• Speaking clearly to infants is a good idea.

7. STEPS TO SPEECH
• Newborns and young babies make many
sounds.
• Cooing – early vowel-like sounds that babies
produce
– Ex: “ooooooo” and “aaaahhhhh”
• Babbling – speechlike sounds that consist of
vowel-consonant combinations; common at
about 6 months
• Ex: “bahbahdudah”
– It is a precursor to real speech
• Babies exposed to a language reflect their
language’s intonation in their babbling.

8. FIRST WORDS AND MANY MORE
• After 9 months, babies can understand a
few basic words.
–Ex: “no” and “bye-bye”
• 10- to 14-month-old babies can identify the
objects being asked.
• Children have made the link between
speech sounds and particular objects.
• Speech is a motor skill requiring perfect
timing and tremendous coordination.

9. WORDS AS SYMBOLS
• Infants must recognize that words are
symbols
– Entities that stand for other entities
• Sensorimotor to preoperational stage.
– 18 months
• Gestures and words convey a message
equally well.

10. FAST MAPPING OF WORDS
• Infants’ vocabularies grow slowly at
first
– 15 month old babies learn 2-3 new words
each week
• At 18th month, they experience naming
explosion – suddenly learning words
at a much faster rate.
– 10 or more new words each week
• fast mapping refers to the ability of
children to acquire new words and
concepts with minimal exposure to
them.

11. FAST MAPPING OF WORDS
Joint Attention
• Word learning by labeling what interests the
children.
• Youngsters considers the adult’s credibility as a
source.
• Parents and children work together to foster
word learning.
Constraints on Word Names
• If unfamiliar word is heard, it refers to one of
the objects that doesn’t have a name.
Hi! I’m Mido!

12. FAST MAPPING OF WORDS
Constraints on Word Names
• Simple rules that help children match words with the
correct referent:
– A name refers to a whole object
– New name denotes subcategory of the original name
– Word applied to one of them consistently is a proper noun
noun
Sentence Cues
• Words and overall structure can be helpful clues to a
word meaning.
– Familiar words but unfamiliar verbs
– Knows “juggle” but not “juggling”
The man is juggling

13. FAST MAPPING OF WORDS
Cognitive Factors
• Increased cognitive skills help them learn new words.
• Intention drives children to learn language.
• Children’s improving attentional and perceptual skills also
promote word learning.
– Paying attention to shape is an easy way to learn names
– Shape bias and naming explosion

14. FAST MAPPING OF WORDS
Developmental Change in Word Learning
• 18-month-old rely on simple attentional
processes to learn new words.
• 2-year-old children learn many words daily.
• From attentional cues to language and social
cues.
Naming Errors
• Underextension when children define words
more narrowly than adults do. (1-3 years)
– Ex: “car” – their family car only; “ball” – his/her
favorite toy only
• Overextension when children define words
more broadly than adults do. (1-3 years)

15. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN WORD
LEARNING
• Naming explosion may occur at 14th to 22nd
month
• Vocabulary size for typical 18-month-olds is from
25 to 250 words
• Phonological memory – ability to remember
speech sounds briefly; an important skill in
acquiring vocabulary
• Children have larger vocabularies when they are
exposed to much high-quality language.

16. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN WORD
LEARNING
Bilingualism
• Infants progress slowly at first when they learn two languages
simultaneously.
• Monolingual children have larger vocabularies than bilingual children.
• Coordinate bilingual when the two languages are equally used /
important.
• Subordinate bilingual when one language (usually the Mother/Native
tongue) dominates the daily life.

17. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN WORD
LEARNING
Word Learning Styles
• Referential Style – language-learning style of children whose vocabularies
are dominated by names of objects, persons, or actions
– Language is an intellectual tool
• Expressive Style – language-learning style of children whose vocabularies
include many social phrases that are used like one word.
– Language is a social tool

18. ENCOURAGING LANGUAGE GROWTH
• Children need to hear others speak to expand their
vocabularies.
• Name objects that are the focus of the child.
• Reading books with them.
– Ask questions while reading.
• Let them watch videos like Dore the Explorer and
Blue’s Clues.
– Children may have difficulty relating real objects and
objects in videos and photographs.
• Children learn new words when they participate in
activities that:
– Forces them to understand their meanings
– Use those words

19. GRAMMATICAL DEVELOPMENT
Common Formulas:
• Actor + Action
–Ex: “Mommy sleep”, “Kuya play”,
and “Ate fly”
• Action + Object
–Ex: “shoot ball”, “clean toys”, and
“throw Teddy”
• Possessor + Possession
–Ex: “Barney shoes”, “Fluffy book”,
and “Daddy stick”

20. FROM TWO WORDS TO COMPLEX
SENTENCES
• Telegraphic speech – speech used by young
children that contains only the words necessary to
convey a message; children’s two word speech
• Grammatical morphemes – words or endings of
words that make a sentence grammatical
– Such as -ing, -ed, or –s
• Overregularization – grammatical usage that
results from applying rules to words that are
exceptions to the rule
– Ex: “Two mans” instead of “two men” (adding -s to
make it plural)

21. GRAMMAR ACQUISITION
The Behaviorist Answer
• Children imitate the grammatical form they hear.
– Learned through imitation and reinforcement.
The Linguistic Answer
• Children are born with a “grammar learning
processor”
– left hemisphere of the brain
• Learning grammar depends on specialized neural
mechanisms that are unique to humans.
• Birth to 12 years is critical for acquiring language
and mastering grammar.
• Mastery of grammar is closely related to vocabulary
growth.

22. GRAMMAR ACQUISITION
The Cognitive Answer
• Children learn grammar through cognitive skills
that help them detect regularities and patterns in
speech they hear.
– Ex: noun + -s = plural
• They learn language by searching for regularities
across many examples that are stored in memory.
The Social-Interaction Answer
• Context of interaction between adults and
children.
• Improved communication provides an incentive
for children to master language and for adults to
help them.

23. COMMUNICATING WITH OTHERS
Taking Turns
• Alternating as speaker and listener
Speaking Effectively
• An infant may point, touch, or make noises to get
an adult to do something.
• Preschool children may give more elaborate
messages to listeners who lack access to critical
information than those who have.
Pare
nt
Can you see the bird?
Infant (cooing) ooooohh
Pare
nt
It is a pretty bird.
Infant ooooohh
Pare
nt
You’re right, it’s a cardinal

24. COMMUNICATING WITH OTHERS
Listening Well
• Preschoolers do not always realize when a
message have a double meaning.
• They assume they know what the speaker have
in mind.
• Passive listening is simply hearing what the
speaker is saying without really trying to
understand it.
• Active listening requires the listener to
understand the point the speaker is trying to
communicate, not just hearing the words he or
she is saying.

25. T H A N K Y O U F O R S L E E P I N G