meaning of new words (MacWhinney, 2015).
Another strategy that children use to increase their vocabulary is logical extension. When learning a word, children extend it to other objects in the same category. For example, when learning that a dog with spots is called a Dalmatian, a child may refer to a Dalmatian bunny (a white bunny with black spots) or a Dalmatian horse. Children tend to make words their own and apply them to all situations they want to talk about (Behrend, Scofield, & Kleinknecht, 2001). At about age 3, children demonstrate the mutual exclusivity assumption in learning new words: They assume that objects have only one label or name. According to mutual exclusivity, a new word is assumed to be a label for an unfamiliar object, not a synonym or second label for a familiar object (Markman, Wasow, & Hansen, 2003). In one study, young children were shown one familiar object and one unfamiliar object. They were told, “Show me the X,” where X is a nonsense syllable. The children reached for the unfamiliar object, suggesting that they expect new words to label new objects rather than acting as synonyms (Markman & Wachtel, 1988). Similarly, young children use the mutual exclusivity assumption to learn the names of parts of objects, such as the brim of a hat, the cab of a truck, or a bird’s beak (Hansen & Markman, 2009).
At around 5 years of age, many children can infer the meanings of words given the context. They can quickly understand and apply most words they hear.
RayArt Graphics / Alamy Stock Photo
By 5 years of age, many children can quickly understand and apply most words that they hear. If a word is used in context or explained with examples, most 5-year-olds can learn it. Preschoolers learn words by making inferences given the context—and inferential learning is associated with better retention than learning by direct instruction (Zosh, Brinster, & Halberda, 2013). Certain classes of words are challenging for young children. For example, they have difficulty understanding that words that express comparisons—tall and short or high and low—are relative in nature and are used in comparing one object to another. Thus, the context defines their meaning, such that calling an object tall is often meant in relation to another object that is short. Children may erroneously interpret tall as referring to all tall things and therefore miss the relative nature of the term (Ryalls, 2000). Children also have difficulty with words that express relative place and time, such as here, there, now, yesterday, and tomorrow. Despite these errors, children make great advances in vocabulary, learning thousands of words each year.
Early Grammar
Young children quickly learn to combine words into sentences in increasingly sophisticated ways that follow the complex rules of grammar (de Villiers & de Villiers, 2014). Three-year-old children tend to use plurals, possessives, and past tense (Park, Yelland, Taffe, & Gray, 2012). They also tend to understand the use of pronouns such as I, you, and we. Similar to telegraphic speech, their sentences are short, leaving out words like a and the. However, their speech is more sophisticated than telegraphic speech because some pronouns, adjectives, and prepositions are included. Four- and 5-year-olds use four- to five-word sentences and can express declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences (Turnbull & Justice, 2016). Context influences the acquisition of syntax. Four-year-old children will use more complex sentences with multiple clauses, such as “I’m resting because I’m tired,” if their parents use such sentences (Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva, Cymerman, & Levine, 2002). Parental conversations and support for language learning are associated with faster and more correct language use (MacWhinney, 2015). Children often use run-on sentences, in which ideas and sentences are strung together.
“See? I goed on the slide!” called out Leona. Overregularization errors such as Leona’s are very common in young children. They occur because young children are still learning exceptions to grammatical rules. Overregularization errors are grammatical mistakes that young children make because they are applying grammatical rules too stringently (Marcus, 2000). For example, to create a plural noun, the rule is to add s to the word. However, there are many exceptions to this rule. Overregularization is expressed when children refer to foots, gooses, tooths, and mouses, which illustrates that the child understands and is applying the rules. Adult speakers find this usage awkward, but it is actually a sign of the child’s increasing grammatical sophistication. And despite all of the common errors young children make, one study of 3-year-olds showed that nearly three quarters of their utterances were grammatically correct. The most common error was in making tenses (e.g., eat/eated, fall/falled) (Eisenberg, Guo, & Germezia, 2012). By the end of the preschool years, most children use grammar rules appropriately and confidently.
Private Speech
As Leroy played alone in the corner of the living room, he pretended to drive his toy car up a mountain and said to himself, “It’s a high mountain. Got to push it all the way up. Oh no! Out of gas. Now they will have to stay here.” Young children like Leroy often talk aloud to themselves, with no apparent intent to communicate with others. This self-talk, called private speech, accounts for 20% to 50% of the utterances of children ages 4 to 10 (Berk, 1986). Private speech serves developmental functions. It is thinking, personal speech that guides behavior (Vygotsky & Minick, 1987).
Private speech plays a role in self-regulation, which refers to the ability to control one’s impulses and appropriately direct behavior; this increases during the preschool years (Berk & Garvin, 1984). Children use private speech to plan strategies, solve problems, and regulate themselves so that they can achieve goals. Children are more likely to use private speech while working on challenging tasks and attempting to solve problems, especially when they encounter obstacles or do not have adult supervision (Winsler, Fernyhough, & Montero, 2009). As children grow older, they use private speech more effectively to accomplish tasks. Children who use private speech during a challenging activity are more attentive and involved and show better performance than children who do not (Alarcón-Rubio, Sánchez-Medina, & Prieto-García, 2014). For example, in one study, 4- and 5-year-old children completed a complex multistep planning task over six sessions. Children who used on-task private speech showed dramatic improvements between consecutive sessions (Benigno, Byrd, McNamara, Berg, & Farrar, 2011).
During elementary school, children’s private speech becomes a whisper or a silent moving of the lips (Manfra & Winsler, 2006). Private speech is the child’s thinking and eventually becomes internalized as inner speech, or word-based internal thought, a silent internal dialogue that individuals use every day to regulate and organize behavior (Al-Namlah, Meins, & Fernyhough, 2012).
However, there is some evidence that private speech may not be as private as suggested. That is, private speech often occurs in the presence of others. When children ages 2½ to 5 years completed a challenging task in the presence of an experimenter who sat a few feet behind the child, not interacting, or alone, the children engaged in more private speech in the presence of a listener than they did when alone (McGonigle-Chalmers, Slater, & Smith, 2014). This suggests that private speech may have social value and may not be simply a tool for self-regulation.
Although Vygotsky considered the use of private speech a universal developmental milestone, further research suggests that there are individual differences, with some children using private speech little or not at all (Berk, 1992). Preschool girls tend to use more mature forms of private speech than boys. The same is true of middle-income children as compared with low-income children (Berk, 1986). This pattern corresponds to the children’s relative abilities in language use. Talkative children use more private speech than do quiet children (McGonigle-Chalmers et al., 2014). Bright children tend to use private speech earlier, and children with learning disabilities tend to continue its use later in development (Berk, 1992). One of the educational
