Imitative language and symbolic maturity in the single-word period

Nicolich, Lorraine McCune; Raph, Jane Beasley

doi:10.1007/bf01080223

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The children reached specific language milestones in sign at earlier levels of Symbolic Play, indicating that the necessary symbolic capacities for these milestones were present earlier than previously hypothesized. With respect to the correspondence between linguistic milestones and Imitation, the present results replicated the synchrony of Nicolich & Raph (1978), but not the timetable of emergencethese phenomena emerged earlier in children acquiring sign. Thus, the internalization of imitation, the process advanced by Nicolich & Raph to explain the decline in Imitation, would have had to have occurred somewhat earlier in signing children.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…As the children in the present study began to combine signs at a mean age of 17.1 months (Bonvillian, Orlansky, Novack & Folven 1983), these results demonstrate that gestural Imitation was correlated positively with signing during the one-sign stage, but was correlated negatively during the two-sign stage. However, in comparison with Nicolich & Raph (1978), these synchronous phenomena occur much earlier in the manual modality.…”

Section: Scoring and Data Analysismentioning

confidence: 86%

“…In comparing these levels with children's linguistic maturity of spoken language, she found that: (a) first referential words occurred when children were at levels 2 and 3 of symbolic play (when pretend schemes first emerge, involving only the self in level 2 and extending beyond the self in level 3); (b) linear combinations or words (i.e., unanalysed phrases such as 'orange juice,' or 'Uncle John') appeared during level 4, when play schemes are combined sequentially; and (c) first syntactic combinations of words emerged contemporaneously with children's demonstration of level 5 symbolic play, the performance of mentally planned symbolic games. With respect to imitation and syntax, Nicolich & Raph (1978) found that children exhibited a decline in their frequency of vocal imitation at the time that they began to combine words. Nicolich & Raph claimed that this emergent linguistic sophistication indicated the presence of higher representational capacities which permitted imitation to be performed internally.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Specifically, we sought to explore whether the structural synchrony between levels of maturity of symbolic play and linguistic complexity (McCune-Nicolich 1981) and the decline in the frequency of vocal imitation at the time of first word combinations (Nicolich & Raph 1978) would also occur in the manual mode. Working from Piaget's (1962) description of the development of symbolic play, McCune-Nicolich (1981) assigned levels of symbolic maturity to children's pretend play.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Communicative gestures and early sign language acquisition

1984

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The gestural (non-sign) communication and symbolic functioning of 13 children who were acquiring Amercian Sign Language as a first language were compared with existing data for children learning a spoken language. Two communicative gestures, Giving and Communicative Pointing, were the strongest gestural correlates of lexicon size for both spoken and sign languages. However, whereas first referential words typically appear after the onset of Giving and Pointing, the initial sign productions of the children in the present study preceded the onset of Giving and Pointing. These children also attained various linguistic milestones at earlier levels of symbolic play maturity than did children learning to speak. These results suggest that the early stages of the acquisition of a visuomotor language and a spoken language emerge from the same communicative bases, but that certain linguistic capacities may be present earlier than generally has been recognized.Several months before children utter their first spoken words, they typically produce a series of gestures that have clear communicative functions. In recent accounts of the language acquisition process, these gestures often are depicted as providing the framework for language through their introduction of turn-taking aspects and communicative exchange (Bruner 1978). Language, in this approach, is viewed as developing primarily out of an extant, functional communicative routine rather than out of an emergent *

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Scoring and Data Analysismentioning

confidence: 86%

mentioning

confidence: 98%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Communicative gestures and early sign language acquisition

1984

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“…The early samples include from 4 to 15 utterances per child, the latest more than 300. Additional methodological details are presented by Nicolich & Raph (1978).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The cognitive bases of relational words in the single word period

McCune-Nicolich

1981

J. Child Lang.

134

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Recent research on single-word language has focused on the acquisition of object words, considering relational words such as more, allgone, here, and up only peripherally. These words are considered in relation to the operative schemes of sensorimotor intelligence as suggested by Sinclair (1970). Relational words, like syntactic structure, appear to develop and exist apart from specific content. Study of such words helps clarify the relationship between sensorimotor understandings and the language of the pre-operational child. Data spanning the entire single-word period from five subjects provide an empirical base for analysing the meanings of these words in use. A model is then proposed for considering relational words as coding a set of interrelated meanings reflecting the cognitive organization of the late sensorimotor period.

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