Communication before Speech

Development and Assessment

Judith Coupe O'Kane, Juliet Goldbart

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781136612343
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First published in 1998. This is the second edition 'Communication Before Speech 'and reflects the new developments in the fields of language acquisition and learning disabilities. Pragmatics, the functional use of communication, has become central to much communicative intervention. Resettlement of people with learning disabilities into the community has been associated with an increased interest in work with adults, particularly those with behaviour that challenges services.

Chapter 1

Re-examining the development of early communication

During the last 20 to 25 years there has been an enormous expansion in research on how normally developing infants and young children acquire language. This research has resulted in new theories of language and communication acquisition; more detailed accounts than we can give here may be found in Harris (1992) and Nadel and Camaioni (1993). We have found these theories exciting, even inspiring, in our attempts to devise intervention strategies for impaired communicators. Our own research has concerned mainly children and adults with severe and profound learning difficulties. However, we are confident that our approaches are relevant to many other individuals at very early stages of language acquisition.

When the first edition of this book was published it could be argued that those of us working in more applied areas had been slow to respond to the implications of this new research. In the intervening ten years there has been a steady trickle of publications on language and communication in children and, to a lesser extent, adults with severe learning disabilities, aimed at making research accessible to and usable by practitioners (see, for example, Beveridge et al. 1989/97, Calculator and Bedrosian 1988, Harris 1990, Linfoot 1994).

Until the early 1970s, the study of language and language development was dominated by two main theories: Chomsky’s grammarian theory (e.g. Chomsky 1957, 1965) and Skinner’s behaviourist theory (e.g. Skinner 1957). It seems likely that any delay in the application of more recent theories and research stems more from the dominance, in published approaches to intervention, of these prevailing theories than from any lack of interest in new work.

These two approaches (behaviourist and grammarian), which will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4, led to a very large number of intervention studies with children and adults showing a wide range of types of language delay or disorder. Many of these studies concerned children and adults with severe learning difficulties, in particular those who were functioning at the one- and two-word stage. As we will see later, these studies were not always very successful. The scope of more recent research on normally developing infants and young children has been extremely broad and encompasses such areas as:

• Adult-infant interaction (e.g. Trevarthen 1979, 1993);

• The type of language input received by young children (e.g. Galloway and Richards 1994, Nelson 1973, Snow 1972);

• Early gestures and vocalisations (e.g. Bates, Camaioni and Volterra 1975, Bruner 1975);

• Different approaches to categorisation of first words and phrases (e.g. Benedict 1979, Bloom and Lahey 1978, Harris 1992).

The findings of these studies can be unified, quite logically, into two new theoretical approaches. These theoretical approaches are usually described as the psycholinguistic approach – a semantic-cognitive theory – and the sociolinguistic approach – a socio-cultural theory. These are, in fact, quite different approaches, but are by no means contradictory. Indeed, Harding (1983) argues that the development of intentional communication is built upon both cognitive ability and social experience. In order to see how each of these theories has influenced the research and practice that we will be discussing in later chapters, it is important to consider their underlying principles.

The psycholinguistic approach

This has four major underlying principles.

1. Some level of cognitive intentionality is required for the development of intentional communication (e.g. Camaioni 1993, Schweigert 1989).

2. The child’s early utterances, which may precede recognisable words, are expressions of semantic relationships, where semantics involves those aspects of language which are to do with the meaning and content of words or protowords (the fore-runners of words).¹ Thus, the first words or protowords that children produce express things to do with meaning and content. Bloom and Lahey (1978) propose the following as the first semantic relations expressed:

• Existence: The child comments on or acknowledges the existence of an object or entity, for example, ‘What’s that?’ ‘Shoe’, ‘This’.

• Non-existence: The child comments on the absence of an expected object or entity, for example, ‘Gone’, ‘Sock’ with rising intonation.

• Disappearance: The child comments on or requests the disappearance of an object or entity, for example, ‘All gone’, ‘Bye-bye’.

• Recurrence: The child comments on or requests that an object, entity or event reappear, reoccur or replace one that has gone, for example, ‘Again’, ‘More’.

3. Semantic relations, these expressions of meanings and content, are an encoding of the child’s existing knowledge about the world. So, when a child uses a word or a protoword they are, in fact, making some comment about something they understand about the world, some action or event in the environment. However, it must be remembered that the meanings do not exist out there in the world; they are imposed on events and object relations by the child (Palermo 1982).

4. Arising out of the first three points, we can see that language development is built, at least in part, on cognitive development; that is, on the child’s actions on and knowledge about objects and the environment and the relationships between them.

The psycholinguistic theory can thus be seen to offer much in explanation of what we observe in the early utterances of young children. The approach also suggests certain intervention strategies, particularly the idea that children need experience of acting on objects and events in their environment, and that these experiences can be gained through interaction with people, with objects and, of course, through play (this topic will be considered in greater detail in Chapters 3 and 4). However, this theory does not explain why language and communication develop. Why should a child feel the need to express a cognitive relationship? Why should a child feel the need to tell you ‘Ball gone’? For an explanation of this aspect, to find out why children learn to communicate, it is necessary to turn to the second theory.

The sociolinguistic approach

In the sociolinguistic approach, a socio-cultural theory, the emphasis is on the child in a social setting. This approach has five fundamental principles.

1. Language is acquired only if the child has reason to communicate (e.g. Harris 1992).We see this as a crucial point, and it will underpin much of what is discussed later in this book.The implication is that a child or adult with language and/or learning disabilities is only going to learn to communicate, or be motivated to communicate, if they have a reason, a purpose, for that communication. This reason could of course be personal, social or material.

2. As the child matures and produces more complex expressions, linguistic structure is initially acquired through decoding and understanding incoming linguistic stimulation.Hence, interactions between the language learner and more mature language users are likely to be very important (e.g. Galloway and Richards 1994).

3. Language is learned in dynamic social interactions involving the child and mature language users.This emphasises the importance of positive contacts with linguistically competent people, since it is they who provide the input to be decoded and understood (e.g.Harris 1992).

4. Language is first acquired as a more effective means of obtaining things that the child could previously get, or do, by simpler communication (e.g.Bruner 1985).

5. Children are active participants in the process of learning communication, and bring to this learning situation a set of behaviours, both social and cognitive, which allow them to benefit from the adults’ facilitating behaviours. Whilst adults play their part in this dynamic interaction, the language learner needs certain social and cognitive skills if they are to benefit (e.g. Camaioni 1993).

Again, this theory has provided a number of clues which we have found particularly helpful in devising intervention strategies. The first is the importance of the child as an active participant in learning language and communication. The notion of the child as an active learner has prompted us to make use of Piaget’s (1952) account of development in the sensori-motor period, the first two years of normal development. Although we acknowledge the difficulties in establishing the precise relationship between cognition and language acquisition (see e.g. Kamhi and Masterson 1989), we have taken the view that certain cognitive and perceptual prerequisites are necessary, but not sufficient, for the development of language and communication. As the language learner becomes older, however, it seems increasingly likely that a mismatch may arise between cognitive level and language level. This may well be the case for some adolescents and adults with severe and profound learning disabilities and is a matter which requires considerable further investigation.

The second issue to emerge is the importance of giving the language learner real opportunities to communicate with mature language users. This theme will be addressed in some detail later in the book.

It will be apparent from the key points, above, that the psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic theories are not mutually exclusive. There is overlap within them, and it is our view that they can be used in a complementary fashion to inform assessment and intervention on communication and language for many client groups. We recognise that there are risks inherent in applying research findings from normally developing children to children and adults with severe learning difficulties who may not follow normal developmental sequences (Greenwald and Leonard 1979, Miller and Chapman 1984). However, unless there is evidence to the contrary and in the absence of comprehensive alternative accounts, the established developmental route seems the best to follow. Therapists, teachers and others planning or implementing intervention in this area need to exercise some caution, particularly if the clients concerned do not seem to be following typical and parallel developmental sequences in social, cognitive and communicative skills.

Development according to the psycholinguistic approach

Let us now examine the stages in development according to the psycholinguistic approach, summarised in Table 1.1. These will include aspects of cognitive, semantic and symbolic development. The ages are, of course, approximate and it cannot be assumed that having the cognitive behaviour necessarily implies that the semantic or symbolic behaviour will be established. The stages are drawn from Piaget’s findings on the sensori-motor period (Piaget 1952, Uzgiris and Hunt 1975).

As can be seen from Table 1.1, during the first month there is only a limited amount that can really be described as cognitive development, certainly nothing that could be classed as semantic or symbolic development. Reflex exercise can be observed; if, for example, the tip of a finger is put in the groove of a baby’s tongue, a reflex sucking response can be elicited. It is also suggested (Haith 1980) that infants at this stage show selective looking, that is, babies have certain strategies which make their visual activity far more than random. Hence, if babies are awake and active, they will open their eyes; if they encounter darkness they will make a broad search of the environment; if they find light but no edges or contours they will again make a broad search. In areas of high contrast, a narrow search is made. Thus, it does seem that infants are ‘preprogrammed’ in such a way that they can demonstrate some cognitive behaviour even at this very early stage.

Table 1.1 Cognitive, semantic and symbolic development in Piaget’s sensori-motor period

Stage label	Approx. age (in months)	Cognitive, semantic and/or symbolic development
First habits	0–1	Infants engage mainly in reflex exercise, sucking, rooting. Selective looking.
Primary circular reactions	1–4	If babies do something with their own bodies, e.g. thumb-sucking, that they find pleasurable, they learn to repeat the action. Early undifferentiated schemes: e.g. mouthing, looking, and holding.
Secondary circular reactions	4–...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction
• 1 Re-examining the development of early communication
• 2 The Affective Communication Assessment: ACA
• 3 Communication for a purpose
• 4 Playing in the zone: using routines to develop early communication skills
• 5 Teaching first meanings
• 6 Assessment of early communication
• 7 From assessment to intervention: examples of the use of the Early Communication Assessment (ECA)
• 8 Accessing and extending pragmatics: the functional use of communication
• Appendix A The Early Communication Assessment: ECA
• Appendix B Consideration of reliability of the ECA
• Appendix C The Manchester Pragmatics Profile
• References
• Index