Child Speech and Language Development

The influence of dialect on child speech assessment processes is important to consider in order to ensure accurate diagnosis and appropriate intervention (teaching or therapy) for bidialectal children. In Australia, there is limited research evidence documenting the influence of dialectal variations on identification of speech impairment among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. The effect of dialect on the identification of speech impairment was therefore investigated in seven eight-year-old Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australian children living in Townsville, Queensland. Up to eighty words were transcribed from a connected speech sample and phonological patterns were analysed using contrastive analysis. The number of participants identified with a speech impairment decreased when typical characteristics of Australian Indigenous Englishes (AIE) were used as the target reference rather than Standard Australian English (SAE).

У овом тексту разматраћемо могућности за осмишљавање лексичких вежби у раду на сложеницама. Полазећи од природе проматраног језичког садржаја, покушаћемо да расветлимо одређене граматичке, али и методичке критеријуме за одабир примера. Примарни циљ текста је да се понуди одговарајући корпус примера, који ће представљати полазиште наставницима и васпитачима за обликовање различитих типова језичких вежби рада на сложеницама. Други важан циљ овог рада је систематизација тих лексичких вежби, зависно од приступа језичкој грађи, с једне стране, и природе језичких примера, механизама њихове творбе, те њихових семантичких компоненти, с друге стране. Полазиште за избор примера чиниће релевантна лингвистичка литература, а систематизација вежби биће вођена анализом садржаја присутних у уџбеницима за основну школу. /// In this text we will discuss the potential for creating lexical exercises that could be used for the analysis, formation and meaning comprehension of compound words. Starting from the nature of the observed linguistic content we will try to distinguish certain grammatical and methodical criteria for selection of the examples. The primary goal of this text is to offer the corresponding corpus of examples which would represent the starting point that elementary school and pre-school teachers would use to shape the various types of linguistic exercises they could use while teaching compound words. Another important goal of this paper is the systematization of these lexical exercises, which, on the one hand, depends on the approach to linguistic material, and on the other hand, on the nature of the linguistic examples, their word formation mechanisms and their semantic components. The starting point for the selection of the examples will be the relevant linguistic literature, while the analysis of the content that can be found in elementary school books will serve as the guidance for the exercise systematisation.

This study evaluated whether core vocabulary intervention (CVT) improved single word speech accuracy, consistency and intelligibility in four 9-11 year-old children with profound sensori-neural deafness fitted with cochlear implants and/or digital hearing aids. Their speech was characterised by inconsistent production of different error forms for the same lexical item. The children received twice weekly therapy sessions for eight weeks. Fifty target words were drilled and changes in production assessed for accuracy and consistency. Generalisation of consistency and accuracy was assessed on non-targeted words. There were four assessment points: six weeks pre-therapy; immediately before therapy; immediately following therapy and six weeks post-therapy. In addition, ten unfamiliar listeners judged the intelligibility of audio recordings of the children’s speech before and after therapy. The children’s consistency and accuracy of single word production improved following CVT. Consistency generalised to untreated words. Sentence intelligibility ratings improved and more target words were identified after therapy.  These case studies suggest that CVT merits further investigation as an effective intervention approach for deaf children, enhancing consistency, accuracy and intelligibility of speech.

Полазећи од промишљања постструктуралистичког приступа курикулуму, концептуализације детета и терминолошких недоумица, потом проматрајући карактеристике и недоумице у вези са применом пројектног приступа у предшколском васпитању и местом развоја говора у њему, текст указује на кључне промене у предшколском систему у Републици Србији. Анализа на поменутим нивоима показаће основне врлине и евентуалне недостатке програма у покушају да конструктивно учествује у његовој успешнијој примени и конкретизацији. /

The focus of this text is set on the concept of educational work that was presented within the recently adopted Fundamentals of the preschool curriculum ‘The years of ascension’ (2018). The emphasis is put on the analysis of theoretical foundations, terminology, educational tendencies, and the question of the initial education of preschool teachers in Serbia.
This recently adopted curriculum is based on the contemporary curricular theories, theoretical principles of the pedagogical and developmental psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines. The concept of childhood, and mainly of the child, is based on the sociocultural theories and poststructuralism. Even though this approach can be seen as modern in the context of educational work in Serbia, the curriculum seems to lack a stronger demonstration of the scope and limitations of foundations that are based on poststructuralism, as well as the socio-political conditionality that supports the designation of these foundations. In this respect, even the framework that this programme is based on (the UN and the EU documents) is not supported with the critical insight into the particularity of the national framework it was created for.
The significant part of the curriculum is dedicated to the representation of socio-cultural conceptions of childhood. The children are seen as the ‘the playful beings’ and the game as their natural relationship with the world. The project approach and the complex definition of the concept of child’s wellbeing are the core of ‘The years of ascension’. The important characteristic of the new curriculum is the introduction of a large number of new terms that can be regarded as an update and a starting point for new approaches to the problem. The possible drawbacks of the mentioned viewpoints pertain to: 1) the insufficiently specified awareness that the idea of the child represented in the curriculum is only one of many possible ideas, (2) the contradicting definition of the idea of wellbeing (with the accent on the problem with defining the correlation between safety and flexibility in educational work), (3) the possible doubts regarding the usage of certain terms (we studied the idea of authenticity, as well as the strong opposition to spontaneity in co-construction of knowledge in the process of planning the learning situations).
The presence of binary simplifications in the curriculum carries with itself a possibility that every attempt to reassess and relativize the values of opposing elements can easily be marked as regressive (evеn if it is not), if one element has a positive value and the other one has a negative value (which is often the case in the curriculum).
Little significance given to the proper preparation of pre-school teachers is regarded as a serious problem. Moving the focus away from the concrete knowledge and professional care for the developmental aspects of child’s character could easily be interpreted as the abandonment of these concepts rather than their perception in a new light – the light of decomposition and co-construction of knowledge. The newly adopted concept of foundations suggests that the competence of preschool teachers will expand and include a series of pedagogical and psychological skills and knowledge at the expense of the foundation of their competence in those sciences that form the basis of development areas (that should be encouraged with children). In contrast to this attitude, we should not forget that the academic knowledge of preschool teachers, as well as their own inquisitiveness and their willingness to learn and to explore, represents the foundation for the creative approach to preschool educational practice that aspire to timely answer the children’s inquisitiveness and to encourage their interest in better understanding of themselves and the world around them. The long-term intention of preschool education should be to develop the need for education as the integral part of both the children’s and the teachers’ characters, and keeping up with these directions (speaking competence, early literacy, etc) would increase if the key aspect of children’s character development would be operationalised and defined with standards.

Words are made up of speech sounds. Almost all accounts of child speech development assume that children learn the
pronunciation of first language (L1) speech sounds by imitation, most claiming that the child performs some kind of auditory matching to the elements of ambient speech. However, there is evidence to support an alternative account and we investigate the non-imitative child behavior and well-attested caregiver behavior that this account posits using Elija, a computational model of an infant. Through unsupervised active learning, Elija began by discovering motor patterns, which produced sounds. In separate interaction experiments, native speakers of English, French and German then played the role
of his caregiver. In their first interactions with Elija, they were allowed to respond to his sounds if they felt this was natural. We analyzed the interactions through phonemic transcriptions of the caregivers’ utterances and found that they interpreted his output within the framework of their native languages. Their form of response was almost always a reformulation of Elija’s utterance into well-formed sounds of L1. Elija retained those motor patterns to which a caregiver responded and formed associations between his motor pattern and the response it provoked. Thus in a second phase of interaction, he was able to parse input utterances in terms of the caregiver responses he had heard previously, and respond using his associated motor patterns. This capacity enabled the caregivers to teach Elija to pronounce some simple words in their native languages, by his serial imitation of the words’ component speech sounds. Overall, our results demonstrate that the
natural responses and behaviors of human subjects to infant-like vocalizations can take a computational model from a biologically plausible initial state through to word pronunciation. This provides support for an alternative to current auditory matching hypotheses for how children learn to pronounce.

This study analyses variation sets in a sample of child-directed speech (CDS) in Turkish in terms of their structure and effect on child speech. The term "variation set" was first introduced to describe the sequences of repetitions, in which the intention behind expressions stays the same throughout the whole conversation while the form shows constant variation. This occurs in various ways such as lexical substitution, rephrasing and so on. This study attempts to investigate the speech of a child aged 1;8 in various conversations with a Turkish native speaker parent who engages in daily activities with her son. As a longitudinal study, the data was collected through video recordings for a period of three months covering the child's developmental stages from the age 1;8 to 1;10. The videos were recorded by the mother on a regular basis during daytime activities in play, meal and leisure times each week. Initially, the recorded data was transcribed and variation sets were identified. Later, they were analysed by looking at their structure and functions in the speech. Finally, the findings were compared with each other (in three sets) for the changes in frequency, structure and functions between the ages of 1;8 to 1;10. The data provide ample evidence on how variation sets in CDS are modified for a successful interaction without a communication breakdown in line with the child's linguistic competence.