Variations on a Theme
We would be doing both children and mothers a disservice if we failed to note that there are many differences in both conversational partners. Let’s examine the individual differences of both and the cultural differences that primarily influence the behavior of mothers.
I N D I V I D U A L C H I L D D I F F E R E N C E S
Children vary not only in the rate of language development but also in the route.
Preschoolers developing typically may exhibit as much as two years variation in language development. Individual developmental differences are related to differences in intellect, personality, and learning style; ethnicity and the language of the home; socioeconomic status; family structure; and birth order. In general, these relationships are very complex, not simply cause and effect. Some factors, such as intelligence, may be much stronger than others. Socioeconomic factors alone, for example, may have little overall effect on rate of language development. There may be more differences within socioeconomic classes than between them.
Birth order or position in the family has a significant effect on early language devel-opment. Single children have a greater opportunity to communicate with adults than do children with several siblings and thus develop language more quickly. Twins who spend a great deal of time talking to each other may have multiple phonological errors (Dodd &
McEvoy, 1994).
The learning style of a child also affects language learning to some extent. In general, an active, outgoing child is more likely to learn language more rapidly than a placid, retiring child.
The former is more inclined to join in and to communicate with whatever means are available, fostering learning the language code.
In social play with others, language is used explicitly to convey meaning because of the different realistic and imaginary meanings of props (“This’ll be a phone”) and roles (“You be the daddy”). Language is used to clarify (“You can’t say that if you’re the baby”) and negotiate (“Okay, you can say it if you want to”). Play themes consist of sequential episodes whose organization increases with a child’s age.
The language used in play is influenced by the participants and the play context. In general, preschoolers prefer same-gender pairs with no adult present. While children of both genders prefer replica play, such as dolls, a pretend store, or dress-up, boys also prefer play with blocks and things that can be used to build.
Initially, preschoolers prefer very functionally explicit props, such as a phone, car, or cup.
As children mature and participate in more frequent imaginative play, they use more ambigu-ous props, such as blocks or stones, that can represent other entities. Remember making a meal from dishes and rocks or mud?
Although a preschool child is too young for team games and is not cognitively ready to follow game rules, he or she does enjoy group activities. Language learning is enhanced by the songs, rhymes, and finger plays common among children in daycare or preschool. Within play, a child and a communication partner can participate in a dialog free of the pressures of “real”
communication. In addition, the child is free to experiment with different communication styles and roles . . . after all, this is play!
178 CHAPTER 6 ■ Language-Learning and Teaching Processes and Young Children
Individual styles of learning are evident very early (Hampson & Nelson, 1993). Different types of maternal stimulation also affect children in diverse ways. Some toddlers attend to symbols while others prefer paralinguistic and nonlinguistic elements. Maternal behaviors may be in response to these differences rather than a cause of them as is often assumed.
Considering solely the rate of language learning may be misleading without accom-panying information on the route. For example, some children exhibit advances in expres-sive language use, while others who seem somewhat delayed in this area exhibit superior comprehension skills.
C U LT U R A L A N D S O C I A L D I F F E R E N C E S
Obviously, not all children receive the sort of “idealized” language input reported in this chapter.
In addition, mothers in non-Western cultures or nonmajority U.S. cultures use other equally valid techniques to gain and hold children’s attention and facilitate learning.
In middle-class American English-speaking families, parental behaviors differ based on the number and gender of the children and perceived differences in the children’s abilities, and in two- or single-parent households. For example, the conversations of mothers with their twins are five times longer and elicit more turns from all speakers than conversations between mothers and a single child (Barton & Strosberg, 1997). Similar findings are reported for conversations between a mother, her infant, and an older sibling.
Mothers of premature children may continue to use linguistic strategies more appropriate for younger children even when their children are age 4 (Donahue & Pearl, 1995). In contrast,
C
ultural factors can reflect differences in the role or status of children, caregiving, and beliefs about how children learn language.Variations on a Theme 179
mothers of late-talking toddlers seem to use the same conversational cues as mothers of toddlers developing typically, although both highly controlling mothers and their late-talking children appear to have less conversational synchrony as measured by semantic relatedness and amount of responding (Rescorla & Fechnay, 1996).
Parenting style affects a toddler’s pragmatics and to a lesser degree, grammar (Taylor, Donovan, Miles, & Leavitt, 2009). Mothers who used more negative control, characterized by high levels of prohibitions (Don’t! No! ) and commands, had children with poorer language skills than mothers who used high levels of guidance or control alone but without the negativity.
When studies control for the effects of socioeconomic level, preschoolers from single-parent homes appear to have better receptive and expressive language and to have fewer com-munication problems, especially when compared to children from households with married, working parents (Haaf, 1996). This difference may reflect the more intensive, one-on-one com-munication between the single parent and the children in these homes. In the absence of another adult, a single parent may spend more time talking to a child.
Socioeconomic and cultural factors result in many different child–caregiver interactive patterns. Among lower class families, the lack of resources may restrict opportunities for children, and parental work schedules may limit parent–child interactions.
Children living in poverty face heightened risks to their cognitive development com-pared to non-poor children (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002; Smith, Brooks-Gunn, & Klebanov, 1997). For example, the vocabularies of children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds de-velop more slowly than those of children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds (Rescorla &
Alley, 2001). Poorer development seems especially true for children exposed to chronic poverty early in life (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 2000; NICHD Early Child Care Research Net-work, 2005). Children from low socioeconomic families may be at-risk for language develop-ment problems because of poor health and poor education. Poverty also affects children’s development by increasing family stressors, creating psychological distress, and impairing the quality of parent–child interactions (McLoyd, 1998). Although socioeconomic status affects expressive and receptive language performance, it does not seem to influence working memory abilities (Engel, Santos, & Gathercole, 2008).
On any given day, approximately 750,000 individuals are homeless in the United States (U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, 2008). Of these about 40% are families (National Coalition for the Homeless, 1999). Language, learning, and cognitive delays are common in preschool children.
Data from mothers and children in homeless shelters is complicated by factors such as poverty, health issues, and race and ethnicity. Nonetheless, we find that both children and mothers in homeless shelters exhibit deficits or delays in at least one of the following: auditory comprehension, verbal expression, reading, and writing (O’Neill-Pirozzi, 2003).
In the Deaf culture, among parents and children who are both deaf and for whom American Sign Language is the primary means of communication, motherese is conveyed by sign and facial expression. Use of sign can present a potential problem because facial expres-sion marks both affect and grammatical structures, such as questions. With only limited use of paralinguistic cues, such as higher pitch and exaggerated intonation and stress, a mother’s nonvocal facial expression takes on added importance as a conveyer of her intentions and as a device to hold a child’s interest. Prior to a child’s second birthday mothers of children with deafness use facial expression primarily for emotion. There is a shift to more grammatical uses after that point (Reilly & Bellugi, 1996).
180 CHAPTER 6 ■ Language-Learning and Teaching Processes and Young Children
Cultural differences may reflect three related factors:
1. The role or status of children.
2. The social organization of caregiving.
3. Folk beliefs about how children learn language.
We must also be careful not to assume that the way middle-class mothers in the United States interact with their children is the only way or the most correct way. In general, interactive pat-terns between children and their caregivers have evolved to fulfill the special needs of the pop-ulations and cultures in which they occur.
In the middle-class American family, the child is held in relatively high regard. This is also true among the Kaluli people of New Guinea. In contrast, the relatively lower standing of children reported in western Samoa and among some African Americans in rural Louisiana results in an expectation that children are to speak only when invited to do so (Ochs, 1982). It is important to remember that low status does not mean a lack of affection for children. Within these same rural southern African American communities, a child is not expected to initiate conversation but to respond to adult questions in the shortest possible form. A child is not expected to perform for adults, and most of a child’s requests for infor-mation are ignored. What expansion exists is an expansion by adults of their own utterances, not those of the child. It is believed in this culture that children learn by observation, not interaction.
Middle-class American mothers talk with their children, not at them. Many maternal utterances consist of comments on topics established by a child through word or action. This tendency to follow a child’s conversational lead is evidenced in maternal expansion and extension of the child’s utterances. Although these semantically related maternal utterances can enhance language acquisition, it has not been proven that they are crucial to the process.
While Chinese and Western mothers both interpret babbling as meaningful, talk about what their children are doing, do not overtly correct, and recognize that their infants understand some words prior to speaking, Chinese mothers use less expansion and conversational prompting and more direct teaching of language (Johnson & Wong, 2002).
Not all cultures value verbal precocity in children or demonstrate the adult modifications seen in motherese. Among the Kipsigis of Kenya and rural African Americans in Louisiana, for example, comprehension is more important than verbal production in young children; many of the utterances directed to them consist of directives and explanations. Kaluli parents and Samoan parents rarely follow their children’s conversational leads. Language acquisition does not seem to be slowed or delayed in any way.
Mothers may use other strategies that seem equally effective to those described in this chapter. For example, Kaluli mothers mentioned previously and some Mexican American mothers provide models of appropriate language for specific situations and direct their young children to imitate these models. In situations with other adults, children are di-rected by their mothers in the appropriate responses. This recycling of appropriate utter-ances for recurring situations is a language-learning device. Like semantically related adult utterances found in middle-class American homes, these predictable situational responses may be highly comprehensible to a child without complete grammatical knowledge (Snow, 1986).
The expectation of a quiet child does not necessarily reflect children’s low status. Within the Apache nation, it is a societal norm to value silence from all people. In general, Japanese parents also encourage less talking by their children, although children are held in very high regard. Nonverbal behavior is more important in Japan than in the United States, and
Variations on a Theme 181
Japanese parents anticipate their children’s needs more often, so children have fewer reasons to communicate.
The second factor, social organization of caregiving, also varies widely and reflects economic organization and kinship groupings. In some cultures, such as that of western Samoa, older siblings are more responsible for caregiving than in middle-class American homes. This arrangement is also characteristic of many inner-city households in the United States. There is no evidence, however, that children raised by older siblings learn language more slowly than those raised by adults.
Finally, folk “wisdom” on language acquisition affects the language addressed to a child.
The Kipsigis of Kenya believe that a child will learn by himself or herself. Thus, there is no baby talk or motherese. A child is encouraged to participate in conversation through imitation of its mother’s model of adult speech. The Kaluli of New Guinea also require imitation from a child in certain social rituals, even though the child may not understand what he or she is saying.
Among both middle- and lower-class African American families, a general belief exists that children learn language by listening and watching, thus there is little need to adapt adult behaviors for a child (Scheffner Hammer & Weiss, 2000). Even so, middle-class African American mothers seem to have a “teaching agenda” that emphasizes production of language by their children. In general, these middle-class mothers include more language in their child play and use a wider range of words with their children than lower-class mothers (Scheffner Hammer & Weiss, 1999). As a consequence, middle-class African American infants initiate more verbal play and produce twice as many vocalizations as lower-class infants. In contrast, lower-class mothers have a very limited teaching agenda and interact less with their children.
Cultural differences are evident in the maternal behavior of Japanese and North American middle-class mothers. While American mothers talk more with their children and encour-age them to respond, Japanese mothers engencour-age in more rocking, carrying, and “lulling.” In responding to their infants, American mothers use more facial and vocal behaviors, while Japanese mothers are more nonverbal, responding with touch. With toddlers, Japanese mothers employ more vocalizations similar to the American English uh-huh, which is not surprising given the importance of omoiyari, maintenance of harmony, in that culture.
The intentions of American mothers are providing information and directing. In con-trast, the Japanese mother exhibits fewer of these behaviors, preferring to use nonsense words, sound play, and emphatic routines, such as discussing feelings. Her productions are usually very easy for her child to imitate.
In general, Japanese mothers are less likely to talk about objects; when they do, it is of-ten without the use of the object’s name, used more frequently in the United States. Although both American and Japanese mothers use questions frequently, American mothers use them more in the context of labeling. It is not surprising, therefore, that American toddlers have larger noun vocabularies while Japanese toddlers have more social expressions (Fernald &
Morikawa, 1993).
Still, similarities exist across languages. Both American and Japanese mothers use lin-guistically simple forms when addressing young language-learning children, repeat fre-quently, and use intonation to engage the infant (Fernald & Morikawa, 1993). The common motivation for these changes seems to be an intuitive sense of the developmental level of the child.
Early book-reading by mothers to infants and toddlers is important for children’s lan-guage and cognition in the preschool years (Raikes et al., 2006). In general, mothers read more to firstborn and female toddlers, and mothers with higher verbal ability and education read more than other mothers. Among low-income mothers, white non-Latina mothers read more than African American and Latina mothers.
182 CHAPTER 6 ■ Language-Learning and Teaching Processes and Young Children
Conclusion
L
ANGUAGE LEARNING IS A COMPLEX process that involves linguistic processing and child and adult language-learning strategies. Different cultures exhibit different strategies.Comprehension and imitation by a toddler seem to be particularly important. Both appear to be at the cutting edge of language development, although the exact relationship is unknown and seems to change with a child’s functioning level.
We do not know the exact language-learning strategies used by young children. These strategies and their underlying cognitive abilities are inferred from children’s behaviors.
Consistency in a child’s language suggests the presence of underlying rule systems. At present, linguists are unsure of the process of rule construction. Undoubtedly, though, comprehension and production are interrelated. This dynamic relationship changes with the level of development and with the structure being learned. The order of acquisition of structures for expressing complex relationships reflects a child’s cognitive growth. A child must understand the concept of the relationship and the linguistic forms used to express that relationship before he or she can use this relationship in his or her own language.
Environmental influences strongly affect language development. Adult modeling and responding behaviors are very important, especially for toddlers. Adult–child language provides a simplified model. Certain responding behaviors also reinforce a child’s communi-cation attempts.
Although a direct teaching explanation of language development is inadequate, there is a strong indication that modeling, imitation, and reinforcement are central to the Children are not limited to direct language input and can acquire language-based knowl-edge by drawing upon a range of experiences. They can also learn language by indirect means, such as conversational exchanges between other individuals. Children can learn language from speech that is not addressed to them.
Television can also provide some very limited input. Unlike conversations, television is passive and does not require a response. In addition, the language provided by television is not related to ongoing events within a child’s interactive context. Although having adults read to a child positively affects the size of the expressive vocabulary of English- and Spanish-speaking preschoolers, watching television does not have this beneficial effect (Patterson, 2002).
Even with all this variation, children still learn their native languages at about the same rate as middle-class American children. In general, in the United States, most adults treat a child as a communication partner. The language-learning American child is raised primarily by his or her parent(s) or paid professionals or paraprofessionals who model and elicit language. Even within the United States, however, there is no definitive pattern.
Of most importance among children in the United States are maternal stimulation and the overall quality of the home. For example, among African American families, a strong correlation exists between maternal sensitivity, responsiveness, stimulation, and elaborativeness and a child’s cognitive and communicative skills at age 1 (Wallace, Roberts, & Lodder, 1998). Although socioeconomic differences exist within the African American community, there is strong evidence of these maternal behaviors among all African American mothers.