It is hard to study how children
really start to use language. Part of
the problem is that we treat language itself as a thing to be studied
independent of how it is used. So, we
focus on the words kids learn or the way they structure those words into simple
and (eventually) more complex sentences.
Another problem, though, is that
when language is really being used, the whole situation is messy. Early on, a parent or caretaker is
interacting with the child. They are
trying to do some activity together.
Originally, the parent may use some words, which the child may or may
not understand. There is also some
pointing and holding of objects.
Eventually, language comes to play more of a role in this process.
That means that really studying
the development of the use of language requires looking not just at the words
kids are using, but also the developing complexity of the interactions between
children and the people around them.
An interesting paper in the June,
2014 issue of Child Development by Lauren Adamson,
Roger Bakeman, Deborah Deckner, and Brooke Nelson looked at a group of children
over several years to begin to map out how these interactions change over
time.
They observed children interacting
with their mothers starting at a year and a half old and continuing until they
were about five and a half. It is worth
recognizing up front that this kind of research is hard to do. Most researchers focus on tasks that can be
done in one session that take an hour or less.
For a group to follow up with the same children over a period of four
years is a tremendous amount of work.
At each visit, the mother and
child played a game together in which the experimenter played the role of the
director of a play. The mother was
supposed to be a supporting cast member, and the child was the “star” of the
play. Then, the experimenter set up
several scenes for the child to play, in which the parent had to help the child
achieve some goal. Over time, the
actions got more complicated as the child’s abilities grew.
For example, in one scene, the
experimenter brought several objects into the room, put them in a cabinet, and
left the room. The mother was then
supposed to get her child to hide the objects in a different spot and then talk
to the child about where the experimenter would think the objects would be when
she got back to the room.
The researchers looked at video of
these interactions to examine how the the nature of the interaction changed
over time, as well as how language use entered into the interactions.
Some of the results are fairly
obvious. For example, at a year and a
half, the parent and child interact with each other a lot, but there is very
little language being used. Mostly, the
parent is directing the child’s actions and occasionally using some words. By the time the child is 3, though, language
is deeply embedded in the interactions.
Almost every action taken by either the parent or child is accompanied
by words.
An interesting change over time is
that at younger ages, the mothers are really directing the interaction. They are setting up a structure for how the
task should be accomplished by moving objects around and asking leading
questions. By the time the child is
five, the interaction is much more balanced.
The parent still leads, but the child is also injecting more suggestions
and making more recommendations.
Another change over time is the
type of things that language is being used to describe. At three, much of the language is focused on
single objects and observable elements in the world. By the age of five, there is also a lot more
discussion about relationships among objects and not just about the objects
themselves.
One surprising aspect of the data
is that at the age of 2 and a half, there is lot of variability between kids in
how much language they are using when interacting with their mothers. Some children use language in nearly every
interaction, while others look like the 18-month-olds, where very little
language is being used. But, by the age
of 3 and a half, just about every child is using language in all of their
interactions with their mother.
That means that as soon as
children learn to speak reasonably well, their interactions shift immediately
to the use of language, because it is such an important tool for
communicating.
A study like this is largely
descriptive. It focuses on what happens
at different points in a child’s life as they start to converse with other
people. What is nice about this work is
that it focuses both on the use of words and sentences, but also on the kinds
of interactions that children are having with others. Ultimately, an understanding of how language
develops is going to require connecting the use of language to the situations
in which language is used.
