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

[Gisela Szagun]

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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