Early social games and the acquisition of language

Abstract

The aim of this study was twofold: (a) to analyse developmental changes in the social games played by mothers and children during normal home activities; (b) to examine how mother's linguistic production during game episodes could be related to the child's pattern of language acquisition. Three mother‐child dyads were followed longitudinally for a 12‐month period starting when the children were 6 months old. Thirty‐minute observation sessions were carried out one in 20 days on average during a free‐play situation in the family environment. Videotapes were segmented into interaction episodes defined as games, and a distinction was made between conventional and non‐conventional games. Results were analysed in terms of both developmental changes and individual differences in characteristics of play behaviour. In all dyads, conventional games increased in significant linear fashion between 6 and 12 months of age and children became increasingly able to play an active role in them. The three dyads also showed consistent differences in some aspects of play behaviour as well as in mothers' style of linguistic production during game episodes and in children's rate of language acquisition. The role of early conventional games in assisting the child's transition to language is discussed.

Shared focus in mother—child joint activity in the second year of life

“…It therefore seems that, from 16 to 20 months, the dyads become more capable of sharing the cognitive and linguistic aspects of a game, rather than its practical aspects. This result is related to previous findings by Camaioni and Laicardi (1985) which shows that the emerging novelty in social games performed in the first half of the second year consists not so much in the child's increasing capacity to perform a game, but rather in hislher linguistic participation in it. Function of Child's Utterances in Format-Centred Games loo i Figure 3 shows that at 16 months the most frequent function is the performative one, whereas at 20 months it is the predicative.…”

What Facilitates Social Engagement in Preschool Children with Autism?

“…Here the categories were not mutually exclusive, either among themselves or in relation to those pertaining to adult activity and communicative role, and so combinations of the following categories might be coded: (a) social routines (adapted from Camaioni & Laicardi, 1985;Stone & Caro-Martinez, 1990;Watson, Lord, Schaffer, & Schopler, 1989) that comprised games, songs or nursery rhymes, and usually involved repetitive movement and sounds. These might be conventional (e.g., waving goodbye or peekaboo) or non-conventional (e.g., swinging the child around each time he or she came off the slide); (b) imitation of the child, either in action, body language, or vocalizations, but not including elaboration of what the child had said, nor merely imitating the child's intonation; (c) self-repetition, meaning one or more repetitions of any adult behavior within a turn, either in actions such as tapping something, body language such as mannerisms, or vocalizations such as occur in a repetitive refrain.…”

A longitudinal examination of the transition to symbolic communication in the second year of life

“…Few studies have considered both the individual child and the mother-child dyad longitudinally using frequent observations over a lenghty period of time (e.g. Adamson and Bakeman, 1984;Camaioni and Laicardi, 1985;Ratner and Bruner, 1978). In the study presented here we will examine both the developmental trajectories of child communicative acts and the developmental trajectories of mother-child communication frames over the second year of life.…”