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

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**

• 27 mos—walks up and down stairs, does not alternate feet

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

• 39 mos—dresses and undressses self

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 200-300 words

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

• At 5 years, by kindergarten, they should be using 2,100-2,200 words

By 6 years of age…**

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

Montgomery 2011:

B. Word Learning**

• Fast mapping —a hypothetical process where children associate a word and its referent after the first or initial exposure

• Extended mapping —new words are gradually expanded and modified as additional experiences become available

For example:**

• A child might learn the word “horse” when he goes on a merry-go-round with his dad

• Then, he extends his understanding as he sees horses in pastures and reads about them in books

Extended mapping “behind” for a 4-year old with LI:

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:

For example, 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

• These refer to how things are related to each other in time

• 1.

• 2.

• 3.

III. PRAGMATIC DEVELOPMENT

• A. Introduction

• For optimal development of pragmatic skills, children need both varied and routine experiences

B. Private and Socialized Speech

•

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

• For example, 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…

Dore’s Conversational Acts**

• Page 273 to the middle of p. 275 are not on the test

• Begin reading at the heading “Discourse Skills—the Conversational Game”

• **d. Style shifting —this aspect of presupposition involves having the speaker modify how something is said based on the status of the listener

• Preschoolers as young as 3 years of age can use please, could you, would you.

E. Preschoolers’ Storytelling

• **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

F. Narrative Levels**• PRIMITIVE NARRATIVES/CENTERING—4 yrs.

—there is an identifiable theme and elements are conceptually related to the core topic (p. 286)

• SEQUENCES/CHAINING—3 yrs.—elements of

story are related to a central topic, but are not necessarily chronologically sequenced (p.

286)

• HEAPS—30 mos.—collections of unrelated utterances (p. 285)

G. Behaviors that contribute to cohesion:• 1.

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.”

• b.

• c.

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:

• a.

IV. SOCIAL SKILLS TRAINING**

• ASHA Schools Conference 2012: 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 2012—possible consequences of poor social skills:

Wiley 2012—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

When adults are reading with children, they can:• 1.

• 2.

• 3.

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

According to Hulit et al. 2011:

Bliss, McCabe, & Mahecha 2001:

Turnbull & Justice 2012 describe print awareness:

• 1.

• 2.

• 3.

• 4.

Research has shown that…