an onomatopoeic toddler and individual differences

[Bruno Estigarribia]

Margaret M. Fleck wrote:
> Nelson, Katherine wrote:
>>   ....  However, individual differences and idiosyncratic approaches 
>> to learning to talk are far more prevalent than the current 
>> literature would lead you to believe, and most children settle on 
>> conventional sounds as well as meanings during the third year. 
> On the one hand, I'm not sure anyone really believes stories about the 
> extent of the differences until they
> actually have personal experience of a kid talking in full sentences 
> at two years and a comparable kid who is nearly mute at the same age. 
> To put this in perspective, however, there's about a 6-month spread in 
> when fairly normal kids learn to walk.  Probably a wider spread in 
> when they learn how to come down a ladder.   And a multi-year spread 
> in potty training
> and learning standard preschool manual coordination tasks, e.g. 
> holding a pencil effectively, cutting food with a
> knife and fork.   For the non-language tasks, there seem to be 
> differences in inherent ability and also differences
> in what the kid feels inclined to put effort into.
And the difference is not only regarding timing. Paths of acquisition 
vary enormously as well as soon as you get away from simple measures of 
language skill (witness the holistic vs. analytic continuum and its many 
different incarnations, plus my own work on yes/no questions).
>
> Perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised by similar variation in 
> language learning.
Well, but you would be surprised, (or annoyed maybe ;-)) if you were 
convinced language and cognition are radically different. A lot of 
language acquisition researchers believe that. To me, that is a 
completely open question. We're back to "not every typical human uses 
knives and forks, but every typically developing child speaks", "oh but 
every human uses tools", kind of discussion. Granted, walking is rather 
universal...
>
> As a parent, I think there's a disconnect between printed discussions 
> of skill timing and the information that's
> passed around the mommy and teacher network, with the manuals tending 
> to understate the extent of the variation.
Which information is clearly anecdotal and elicited in very uncontrolled 
environments, prone to all sorts of biases. Said as a parent of a 2 1/2 
year old who thinks his kid is way ahead of the curve... but what do I know?
Bruno Estigarribia
FPG-NDRC-UNC