Communication Development in the Preschool Years

preschool years

30 months to 5 years

by 30 months

follows 2 step unrelated directions

• give me the ball

• go get your coat

play development

development of symbolic play

three years (36 mo)

• cooperative social pretend play

• assigns roles, uses dialogue

preschool years: semantics

• semantics - vocabulary growth

  • produce 200 words by age 2

  • produce 1800 words by age 4

  • comprehend 10000 words by age 5

• syntax (grammar) - sentence building

  • billy was riding his red bike down the street

  • subject + verb + possessive pronoun + object + location/prepositional phrase

preschool years morphology

articles (the, a)

pronouns (it, he, she)

past tense verbs, regular and irregular

auxiliary (helping verbs) is, are, was, were, have, should, could

preschool years syntax

complete clauses - subject, verb, object

sentence building

compound sentences

• I went to grandma’s house and then I got some candy and then I played outside

preschool years phonology

cluster reduction: fog for frog

velar fronting: tup for cup

articulation errors: placement errors

• distortions /s/ and /r/ sounds

phonology

sounds and the rules for combining sounds in a language

preschool years pragmatics

conversation skills

• turn taking rules: when to initiate and when/how to respond

• communication repairs

• awareness of listener needs

social communicative competence

pragmatic skills (appropriateness of communication) + social cognition (awareness of other’s intentions, feelings, and desires)

knowing what to say, how to say it, when to say it, where to say it, who to say it to

theory of mind

cognitive understanding that others may have beliefs, intentions, feelings different from yours

• emerges between 3 to 4 years of age

• supports development of awareness of the listener’s perspective

narratives

personal

fictional

• retell

• generation

additive chains

“i like butterflies. the butterfly touch my finger. i sawed it on the flower”

• each sentence may be moved without changing the story

• early connective words: and, and then

chronological narratives

• events follow a logical sequence

• sequences may be simple

• but no overall plot

• “i go to jane’s school and da man hid a white rabbit”

emergent literacy stage

1 year old

begins with first exposure to written/printed word

includes phonological awareness (for decoding), language, and working memory abilities (for comprehension)

phonological awareness

explicit awareness of the sound structures of speech

one’s ability to attend to, reflect on, or manipulate the speech sounds in words

developmental sequence of phonological awareness

pre kindergarten

• rhyming

• clapping for number of syllables

• compound word deletion

  • cowboy-cow = boy

emergent literacy/logographic stage (preschoolers)

recognize words with visual saliency (labels, signs)

transition phase (preschool and kindergarten)

begin to use some letters in the word to make educated guesses

overview of development

infancy: from crying to short phrases (0-24mon)

preschool years: from early sentences to stories (3-5)

school age and adolescent years: from oral language to written language (5-21)

adulthood: 21+