Giving children non-verbal clues about words boosts vocabularies

The clues that parents give toddlers about words can make a big difference in how deep their vocabularies are when they enter school, new research at the University of Chicago shows.

By using words to reference objects in the visual environment, parents can help young children learn new words, according to the research.

It also explores the difficult-to-measure quality of non-verbal clues to word meaning during interactions between parents and children learning to speak.

For example, saying, "There goes the zebra" while visiting the zoo helps a child learn the word "zebra" faster than saying, "Let's go to see the zebra."

Differences in the quality of parents' non-verbal clues to toddlers (what children can see when their parents are talking) explain about a quarter (22 percent) of the differences in those same children's vocabularies when they enter kindergarten, researchers found.

The results are reported in the paper, "Quality of early parent input predicts child vocabulary three years later," published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Erica Cartmill

"Children's vocabularies vary greatly in size by the time they enter school," said lead author Erica Cartmill, a postdoctoral scholar at UChicago.

"Because preschool vocabulary is a major predictor of subsequent school success, this variability must be taken seriously and its sources understood."

Scholars have found that the number of words youngsters hear greatly influences their vocabularies.

Parents with higher socioeconomic status—those with higher income and more education—typically talk more to their children and accordingly boost their vocabularies, research has shown.

That advantage for higher-income families doesn't show up in the quality research, however.

"What was surprising in this study was that social economic status did not have an impact on quality.

Parents of lower social economic status were just as likely to provide high-quality experiences for their children as were parents of higher status," said co-author Susan Goldin-Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology at UChicago.

More information: Quality of early parent input predicts child vocabulary 3 years later, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1309518110

Dyslexia: Simulation Exercises Prepare Teachers

If trying to teach students with the learning disorder of dyslexia is frustrating for most teachers, consider what it must be like from the student’s point of view.

That’s exactly the point of dyslexia simulation exercises that every teacher candidate must experience before graduating with a degree in early childhood, elementary or secondary education at Southeastern Louisiana University.

“The role of an insightful teacher in working with a child with dyslexia is critical, and their perceptions play an important role in learning,” explained Elizabeth Wadlington, professor of teaching and learning in the College of Education and Human Development. She coordinates dyslexia simulation exercises for students at Southeastern every semester.

Dyslexia, the most common language-based learning disability that impairs an individual’s ability to read, write and spell, affects between 17 and 20 percent of the U.S. population. It is not related to intelligence, Wadlington said.

“Dyslexia causes difficulty in language processing,” she added. “The kids may be bright and intelligent and can see and hear just as well as everyone else, but they have a problem processing the information in their brains.”

The simulation exercises she and her colleagues present are designed for the future teachers to feel the frustrations these children feel when they are in the classroom.

After attending lectures on dyslexia to gain a basic understanding of the issue, the students participate in the simulation exercise, rotating through a variety of stations that focus on simulating reading difficulties, writing and visual-motor difficulties, and visual perception and visual processing difficulties while trying to read.

Meanwhile, faculty facilitators play the role of teachers, demonstrating the impatience, exasperation and lack of understanding that Wadlington says are all too common in many classrooms. After each station, the students go through a debriefing session, reflecting on their experiences.

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Dyspraxia: Work with Your Child's Teacher to Identify and Address Math Disabilities

Mathematics disabilities are identified through a variety of procedures. Usually the classroom teacher or parent observes that the child is having persistent difficulty learning mathematics and tends to perform poorly on classroom math assessments compared to the rest of the class. For example, the child may have trouble remembering what the teacher has taught or she may have difficulty using effective strategies to solve math problems.

By observing and working directly with a child over time, the teacher can determine if her difficulty learning mathematics is persistent. Unfortunately, mathematics disabilities are usually not identified until the upper elementary school years because early problems often go undetected and assessment results may not be sensitive enough to detect a problem until the later grades.

Information about the child's performance can be gathered in several ways. Weekly tests, homework, and class work samples are examples of information the teacher can collect about the child's progress learning the mathematics curriculum. The teacher may adapt how instruction is provided to accommodate a child's learning needs and then note how the child responds to those adaptations.

The teacher may also seek assistance from a specialist or school support team who can offer additional ideas about how to adapt instruction for the child who is struggling to learn the curriculum. The teacher may also consult with the child's parents to understand how the child is doing on math homework. All of this information helps the teacher and school support team develop a profile of the child's learning difficulties and her response to instruction and adaptations.