COMS 2223: An Overview of Communication Development

Important Concepts

- What are the learning outcomes for this class?
- Communicative competence
- Foundational aspects of communicative competence
- Speech and language milestones

Communicative Competence

Refers to the implicit knowledge that speakers of any given language have to communicative effectively in that language. It is about knowing how, where, when and with whom to speak.

Communicative Performance

Is the actual act of speaking. We may have competence but can make errors during performance.

Linguistic Competence

- Phonological Competence: (Phonics)
- Grammatical Competence: (Grammar)
- Lexical Competence: (Vocabulary)
- Discourse Competence: (Debate, speak, engage, narrate. The first three go into discourse.)

Pragmatic Competence

- Functional: (Do you know how to request, command, problem solve, reject)
- Sociolinguistic: (How you speak to your clients, your boss, your family, your colleagues.)
- Interactional: (Interacting with others, eye contact.)
- Cultural: (Understanding ones culture, once a teenager you start to understand certain cultures.)

Developmental Aspects of Communicative Competence - Three Phases

1.) Birth - 6 months - Attendance to social partners: ( Babies start to smile, babble, they start to look at you.)
2.) 6 months- 1 year - Emergence and coordination of joint attention: (You can sit with the baby and read them a book and interact with them.)
3.) 1 year & beyond - Emergence of language: (Speaking begin to emerge, they start to talk, their absorbing.)

Intentionality & Symbolic Representations

- Emergence of Intentionality (7-12 months): Eye gaze, pointing, gesturing, crying to describe needs or interests.
- Symbolic Representations ( ~ 1 year): Words are arbitrary symbols - infants learn the lexicon, the sounds that go with it, its meaning, part of speech. By 1 year of age children learn to use symbolic representations.

Speech Milestones

- Stages of vocal development - Nathani, Ertmer & Stark (2006)
- Reflexive Stage (0-2 months): (It reflex the babies needs, they cry, differentiated crying)
- Cooing and Gooing (1-4 months): (What they are producing sounds like coos and goos, the baby has no room for tongue to do more talking, they can only produce k, g, and u.)
- Expansion (3-8 months): (They have room for the pharynx, they can laugh do high pitch shrill shrinking, growls and grunts, raspberry.)
- Canonical Stage (5-10 months): (Babbling stage)
- Advanced Forms (9-18 months): They can say their first words.

Achievements in Speech
1.) Attainment of specific phonemes

- Customary age of production - 50% of children produce the sound in multiple positions of a word - indicated by the left margin of the bar.
- Age of mastery - 90% of children produce the sound in multiple positions of a word in an adult-like manner - indicate by the right margin of the bar.
- Word of caution - lots of variations across norms.

Achievements in Speech
2.) Phonological processes

- Natural adjustments applied to specific sounds and sound classes to simplify the phonological production.
- These are universal but change as the child matures.
- However, if it persists beyond a certain age, intervention will be necessary.
- These are known as phonological processes
- Few examples include:
- Final consonant deletion (ca for cat)
- Reduplication (wa wa for water)
- Consonant harmony (doddie for doggie)
- Cluster reduction (cayon for crayon)

Achievements in Language - Form

- The mastery in form, content and use generally happens around 3-5 years of age (preschool years)
- So language mastery is nearly complete by 5 years
- Language form
- 50 words by 18 months
- Rudimentary syntax, 2-word stage, telegraphic speech by 18-24 months
- Grammatical morphemes appear between 19-28 months
- Mean length of utterance (MLU) around 1.9 by 2 years

Achievements in Language - Content

- Comprehension always precedes expression
- Once children acquire 50 words they go through a word spurt (Vocabulary Spurt) that begins between 18 months to 24 months
- Also called explosion as they learn 7-9 new words per day
- Vocabulary development - underextension and overextension
(- Underextension: cup refers to just their green sippy cup
- Overextension: Horses refer to all animals)

Achievements in Language - Use

- Children are able to use language for a variety of language functions by the time they get to multiword stage.
- Conversation is not easy for toddlers. They can't keep it going for more then two turns.

New Language Functions

- Instrumental (requires to satisfy their needs e.g. can I use this next?)
- Regulatory (use directives e.g. stop pushing me!)
- Personal Interactional (share feelings e.g. this is my favorite singer)
- Heuristic (ask questions to learn more e.g. how does this work?)
- Imaginative (tell stories to pretend)
- Informative Functions (give information: the lockers are down the hallway)