query about the pace of early child language development - follow up

Sun Aug 2 15:14:51 UTC 2009

Another consequence of language and cultural changes is that measuring instruments(e.g. the MacArthur CDI) gradually go out of date.    E.g. "(TV) remote" and "DVD" arenow very important words to small children.   The pictures of telephones in mostsmall kid books are unrecognizable.   And so forth.   If kids maintain a constant levelof linguistic ability, one would expect a steady decline on vocabulary-heavytests that are held constant.    
Margaret Fleck

--- On Fri, 7/31/09, Brian MacWhinney <macw at cmu.edu> wrote:

From: Brian MacWhinney <macw at cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: query about the pace of early child language development - follow  up
To: info-childes at googlegroups.com
Date: Friday, July 31, 2009, 3:29 PM

Folks,
Let me suggest an all-too-obvious explanation for this frequently reported pattern of a pseudo-decline.  Somewhat pompously, we could refer to it as Linguistic Special Relativity.  The first thing to note is that language is always changing.  Second, this change is occurring more radically and quickly in children than in adults.  Given this, the gap between adults and children continues to widen throughout the adult's lifetime.  It is almost like a Doppler shift as the ambulance moves out into the distance.  The net result of the continually increasing gap between the adult and the child would be the sensation in the adult (but not the child) that language is deteriorating in younger generations over time.
--Brian MacWhinney

On Jul 31, 2009, at 6:12 PM, Gisela Szagun wrote:
I think this is an interesting question. I wonder whether you are thinking of any particular language, some languages or all languages world wide?

 In a number of European societies educators and clinicians have the view that children's language abilities are deteriorating. It is unclear on which systematic empirical evidence their view is based. It would probably be hard to find it. Many child language studies are based on small samples often biased in favour of children with more highly educated parents. Clearly, we would need large representative samples and data collection over a long period of time preferably using the same language assessment tools. One study in Germany by Hermann Schoeler compared children's results in language assessments at school entry 7 years apart. The samples were large and representative of the population. This is not a large time gap, of course. But the result is interesting. On the whole, he found no difference between the two samples, whereas the clinicians and educators who had done the testing reported that children's language had deteriorated as compared to 7
 years before. (I'm not sure if it was exactly 7 years apart, but something like that). 

Regards,
Gisela

 On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 6:03 PM, Nan Ratner <nratner at hesp.umd.edu> wrote:

 Actually, what is even more interesting is that this morning, as I got this e-mail inquiry, a student completing a thesis compared her current study of DSS in children to Lee's (1974) values: these more "current" children had values greatly in excess of Lee's normed values.

 Nan

 Nan Bernstein Ratner, Professor and Chairman
 Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences
 0100 Lefrak Hall
 University of Maryland
 College Park, MD 20742
 nratner at hesp.umd.edu
 http://www.bsos.umd.edu/hesp/facultyStaff/ratnern.htm
 301-405-4213
 301-314-2023 (fax)

 >>> "Philip Dale" <dalep at unm.edu> 7/31/2009 1:00 PM >>>

 This is a fascinating question, especially in light of the research on the
 "Flynn effect" - the fact that IQ and other tests have to be renormed
 periodicaly because scores go up and the average would no longer be 100. And
 certainly language is a core piece of IQ. A good place to start would be the
 chapter by Dorothea McCarthy in the 1954 Handbook of Child Psychology. I had
 this volume at one time, but have lost it in the course of moving. She
 reports some figures about vocabulary size and length of utterance that
 could potentially be compared to current figures. Of course
 representativeness of samples wasn't as big a deal then as it is now. This
 would be an excellent research topic.

 Philip Dale, Professor and Chair
 Speech & Hearing Sciences
 University of New Mexico

 -----Original Message-----
 From: info-childes at googlegroups.com [mailto:info-childes at googlegroups.com]
 On Behalf Of Nan Ratner
 Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 10:56 AM
 To: info-childes at googlegroups.com
 Subject: query about the pace of early child language development

 A colleague of mine has asked a question that perhaps you can help me with.
 He wonders if the rate of language development (e.g., ages at which major
 milestones are achieved, or ages associated with values for measures such as
 MLU) has "sped up" over the years? Aside from trying to compare current
 studies that report a value for something like MLU with early work by Brown
 and colleagues, for example, has this question been addressed in any formal
 way?

 best regards to all on the list,

 Nan

 Nan Bernstein Ratner, Professor and Chairman Department of Hearing and
 Speech Sciences 0100 Lefrak Hall University of Maryland College Park, MD
 20742 nratner at hesp.umd.edu
 http://www.bsos.umd.edu/hesp/facultyStaff/ratnern.htm
 301-405-4213
 301-314-2023 (fax)

-- 
Prof Gisela Szagun PhD BSc

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