Web viewThe inability to clearly communicate with others has many implications in Stacy’s...

Child Study on Cognitive and Language Development


Carlyn Knight

Sonoma State University

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Background

This child study took place in a private preschool within a classroom of four- and

five-year old children. The children attend school three mornings a week for

three hours per day. “Stacy” (not the child’s real name) is a four-and-a-half year

old girl who attended preschool for the first time this year. She lives at home with

her mother, father, and two sisters – one sister is approximately two years older

and the other is approximately two years younger than Stacy. Her mother stays at

home with the children and the father works as an operations manager at a local

company. Warmth and affection are exhibited within her family as Stacy says

good-bye in the morning and when she greets her family at pick-up time. The

mother relays information that Stacy shares at home about school; likewise, Stacy

shares stories about her family at school.

Before school began, I met Stacy, her mother, and her younger sister at a home

visit in the summer. Stacy was excited to meet me and the head teacher. She had

recently celebrated her four-year-old birthday and showed us her prize birthday

present – pretend make-up that was glittery and pretty. Mom kept it in a

decorated box on a high shelf, so that glitter was not all over the house. Stacy had

chosen this gift on a shopping trip with grandparents. Stacy is a willowy and

pretty blonde girl. Her expressive emotions are seen in her face and body

language. She can be bubbly, giggly, enthusiastic and excited, as well as pouty,

sad, stubborn, and controlling. Her speech is frequently difficult to understand, in

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major part due to pronunciation difficulties. However, syntax and grammar are

also often much younger than her chronological age. At times it is difficult to

discern if Stacy’s receptive language or expressive language is the cause of

communication breakdown – or if there is a processing difficulty. At the school’s

Fall Observation and Conference, Stacy’s mother shared that she was aware of

Stacy’s speech delay and was hopeful that relating with peers at preschool would

help her with her speech development. Stacy received early intervention speech

and language therapy until she was three years of age. As the year progressed I

continued to have concerns and questions about Stacy’s language and cognitive

processing. I wanted to observe her more closely and chose to focus on her for

this child study.

Behavior and Changes Over Time

Over the course of this study Stacy has not demonstrated clear pronunciations

with a number of her speech sounds. Recently, she was assessed by a team of

speech therapists who determined her ready for kindergarten. The inability to

clearly communicate with others has many implications in Stacy’s cognitive and

language development which I will seek to delineate in this paper.

Over and over again Stacy’s imaginative play displays symbolic representations

and actions. She loves to play in the sandbox alone and with friends, making

“snowballs,” “soup,” “cakes,” and “cookies.” In the creative dramatic area at

preschool she has gone on picnics in Hawaii, eaten at an Italian restaurant, ridden

in a fire-engine with firefighters, and chased after her pet doggie. During these

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times she articulates thoughts, directions and facts with her words. At the Italian

restaurant, she was observed telling her friends: “I want some milk” and then later

scolding one of the friends (who was shaking pretend spices into her cup) “You

don’t put it in your water. You put it in your food!” Stacy is not afraid to assert

herself with language (“It’s my turn” and “That’s my place”). She also asks

questions of both teachers and peers. However if her stories have much length at

all, they become difficult to follow if there is no context – even for a teacher. In

Stacy’s imaginative play I did not observe lengthy dialogues and/or complex

themes acted out. I did observe aggressive behavior and territorial behavior

which may have resulted from an inability to be understood OR a learned

behavior from not being understood.

One area of continued growth is syntactic development. Stacy does not always

seem to understand the subtleties of syntax and grammar in conversational

dialogue and questions. On one occasion Stacy brought me some chicken soup

from the sandbox. After I enjoyed several tastes, I asked her what else was in her

chicken soup, and she replied “Chicken!” I responded by telling her that I had

eaten chicken soup at my house for dinner the night before – and my soup had

some potatoes and carrots in it. I then asked “Are there some other things in your

soup? Some vegetables?” to which Stacy responded “Zucchini.” Another

example occurred at snack time when she said “I want some juice.” There were

four options sitting on the table and I asked her “Which one?” Stacy repeated the

same request. I then repeated my question and added “I need to know which

kind: apple juice, grape juice, orange juice, or water?” Stacy gave me her answer

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by using sign language for “apple.” One last example took place at a different

snack time when Stacy held up a cupcake that she had chosen and showed it to me

two different times. Each time I asked her if she was going to eat it. The first

time she grinned and set it down; the second time she put it top down – frosting

into the napkin, and shook her head no. I responded by telling her that she didn’t

have to eat it, that was okay. In all of these instances I experienced a

communication breakdown with Stacy. The first two examples resolved when I

scaffolded my questions, hoping to clarify what I meant by the word “else” in the

first example and the word “which” in the second example. In the third example I

was confused by Stacy’s behavior before and after my questions.

Stacy further revealed her still developing syntactic development when she ran to

find a little boy outside and asked him a question. The boy was distracted and I

told him that Stacy was asking him a question or telling him something. I asked

her to repeat it again and afterwards he said he didn’t know what she said. She

spoke softly and with unclear pronunciation, and I caught something like: “Where

is the spinkle soogar sandbox.” I asked her to show us what she wanted and she

took us to the back of the sand house where they had played earlier. The boy had

left a cup and a sifter, and she pointed to the items and repeated “Come where is

the spinkle soogar sandbox.” I interpreted that she wanted him to come and

pretend he was sprinkling sugar on her sandbox meal creations. Sometimes she

articulates things clearly with correct grammar. Other times her speech is very

difficult to understand as illustrated above, or very young, such as “Me no like

that.”

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A significant event occurred for both Stacy and me, when she demonstrated her

ability to reflect and then use language to communicate her thoughts and

observations. After having the school guinea pig at her house for the week-end,

Stacy told me that “Paisley doesn’t like toot.” Once again she was not understood

due to mispronunciations. After puzzling over this for a while, I said “I’m sorry.

I don’t know what toot is. Can you think of another way to tell me this?” Time

went by while she worked on an art project, and then she said “We put Paisley on

the grass and we gave her tawbewwies (strawberries).” I spoke my thoughts

aloud, saying “You gave her strawberries? Oh… Paisley doesn’t like fruit.”

Stacy responded with a huge grin and a nod. I then said “Thank you for telling

me a different way. Now I understand!” This event was noteworthy because it

demonstrated Stacy’s ability to engage in metacognition; in other words she was

able to think about her own thinking (her own cognitive operations) and to use a

strategy that solved her communication problem (Bjorklund, 2012, p. 281).

Using language as a tool with which to negotiate was rarely noted and is still

developing. On one occasion Stacy and a friend wanted to use all of the chairs at

the sand house, but a group of boys were using some of the chairs for their home-

made canon on their pirate ship. The girls wanted the chairs but couldn’t obtain

them. The girls came to me and the friend reported the story, while Stacy told me

“We said ‘pease’ (please).”

Another observation revealed the still-developing skill of negotiation, when Stacy

used large hollow blocks to build a city. She played by herself and was unwilling

to give up any of the blocks to other children – even when a teacher tried to help

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her with many ideas. Stacy became upset and sad and sought to control the

situation with words like “Don’t take anymore.” In this incident Stacy did not

demonstrate an ability to take the perspective of children who would also like to

play with the blocks. During a different observation, a group of boys wanted the

housekeeping area for their fire station. Stacy and a friend were using it for their

house, and Stacy held her ground saying they were playing there, but the boys

could come too.

A “threatening Stacy” was encountered when another girl threw sand in the sand

house, messing up food that Stacy and a friend had made. Stacy had told the

offending child (who was now sobbing) that she was going to “bite her cheek off

and not be her friend anymore”! On several other occasions she has been

observed telling others, “No, you can’t take all of our stuff.” At the same time

she has been saddened when a toy (i.e. shovel) was not available, and later she has

brightened when one was brought to her. Her theory of mind appears to still be

developing.

The last area of development that I will note is Stacy’s use of temporal terms. In

one instance Stacy reported her sibling’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese Pizza

Parlor. In her narrative I had difficulty discerning when this event occurred or if

it was still to happen. When I asked her mother about the event, I learned that the

referenced party had happened last summer. On another occasion Stacy began

crying before we ate snack. She shared that she was sad because her daddy was

not coming home “tonight ‘cause he’s working far away.” I learned that her dad

had been away the past two nights and was coming home that evening. At other

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times her temporal terms have been used correctly, for example: “In two more

days we are going to Lake Tahoe” (this proved true).

Significance of Behaviors and Changes

Stacy’s use of symbolic representation in her make-believe play is an important

developmental accomplishment for children between the ages of three and five.

Vygotsky believed that this type of play paves the way for future literacy skills

(Bodrova & Leong, 2007, p. 124) and Piaget speaks to the importance of this type

of play in cognitive development (Bjorklund, 2012, p. 90). Stacy demonstrated

her budding knowledge of concepts, when she was able to tie “strawberries and

fruit” together; in this same instance she revealed that she is beginning to think on

an internal mental plane (Bodrova & Leong, 2007, p. 125). Stacy was able to

think of “another way” to tell me about her observation of the guinea pig without

the use of physical or concrete objects. She imagined the scene in her mind and

relayed the past event so that I could “see” it. She also used the specific word

“strawberries” instead of the general category of fruit (which I did not understand

because it was pronounced “toot”).

At times Stacy’s syntactic development seems age-appropriate and at other times

it appears quite young (i.e. “Come where the spinkle soogar sandbox is?”). At my

request she was assessed by a speech therapist who stated in a report that Stacy

“displays age-appropriate expressive language skills” and a “high rate of speech

intelligibility.” Stacy does use context (i.e. taking us to the sandbox and showing

us the sifter), cognitive problem-solving (i.e. thinking of another way to explain

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her story), and gestures/body language to facilitate her communication with

others. If numerous ear infections are the cause of her speech delays, I am

hopeful that the sequences of syntactic development are merely lagging behind

and will eventually “catch up.” Bjorklund (2007) speaks of syntactic

development progressing from holophrases to telegraphic speech to complex

sentences with proper word order around 3 years old. He cites research which

evidenced that most children between the ages of 2 ½ and 3 years old could

“recognize an improperly worded sentence; within another year, they can

recognize incorrect word order even when unfamiliar verbs are used” (Tomasello,

2006, as cited by Bjorklund, 2007, p. 359). Stacy does not always exhibit this

skill in her expressive language and she will be five years old in July.

In my observations I have come to believe that Stacy’s inability to clearly

communicate with her peers (and sometimes her teachers) does impact her peer

relationships. Overall, her social competence is “stable.” She has several friends

and is well-liked in the class. However, I rarely observed her negotiating with her

peers. Instead I saw her becoming territorial or directive towards others who

seemed to threaten the play that she had set up. In these situations she did not

listen to others or try to explain what she wanted. Instead she used a commanding

voice and clear orders, at times with intimidations. She appeared to use her social

competence to compensate for her communicative incompetence (Tabors, 2008).

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Assessing Needs, Planning and Implementing Activities

When Stacy demonstrated that she was able to “think of another way” to tell me

the guinea pig story, we were both excited. Stacy now had a new strategy that she

could use when she was not understood. I shared this with her mother and we

also talked about using context (showing others the things she is talking about) as

another strategy. In assessing Stacy’s needs, I believed that her peer relationships

were most impacted by her communicative delays – especially in the area of

negotiating. The area that I decided to focus on first was to help her develop

skills and strategies in negotiating with her peers. When there were disputes over

play, I wanted to model a problem-solving strategy. Stacy responds emotionally,

as do many of her friends who are girls. I decided that when a dispute arose I

would grab an item (such as a leaf, book, etc.) and say “Okay, I want to hear

everyone’s story. Whoever is holding the leaf gets to tell me what happened and

everyone else has to listen. Everyone will get a turn to hold the leaf and talk.”

My purpose was for Stacy to learn to hear her friend’s perspectives (and begin to

develop theory of mind) and to also be heard by her peers and develop

communicative competence.

The first time that I was able to implement this strategy we were outside during

free play and Stacy was in the sand house. Stacy had threatened to “bite her

friend’s cheek off and not be her friend anymore” after the friend threw sand into

the sand house. Stacy’s friend K. was sobbing, due to these remarks. There were

four children involved in this scenario; each child had a turn to hold the leaf and

tell what happened (if someone began to talk and it was not their turn, they were

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“other-regulated” by their peers). Stacy was able to relate that K. had “messed

up the food” that she and another child had made. K. was able to explain that it

was “because she was being a baby and babies don’t have good manners.” With

this understanding of why the behavior occurred, the children talked about how

they felt (sad, mad, etc.) and we all shared ideas on how to resolve the situation

now and in future situations In the end, we all decided that Stacy could tell K.

that she’s messing up the food and ask her to stop; if K. did not stop, Stacy could

then get a teacher to help her. K. learned that even bad-mannered babies can’t

throw sand at school. The next day K. had a dispute with another child and we

used the same strategy; this time I was even less involved as the moderator.

After learning about Tools of the Mind I was interested to try scaffolding a play

plan to help Stacy develop self-regulation skills. The creative dramatic play area

was set-up as an outdoor flower market and deli. Stacy was sitting at the picnic

table with K. and they were pretending to eat food “in Hawaii.” I commented on

how beautiful Hawaii is and asked her if she wanted to plan what else she would

do and say in Hawaii. She said yes and we got some paper. She said that she

bought a house, and I asked her if there would be other people in the house. She

said no. I asked her if she was going to be a mommy or sister or someone else in

Hawaii. She didn’t know. In the end, there were really no other plans or people

for this Hawaii scenario. It may have been that K. began the idea and then Stacy

joined in. Once K. left, Stacy didn’t know how to continue and was more

interested in visiting with me. I realize that I have a lot more to learn about play

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plans and that it would be best to try this again with a theme that has many well-

developed roles!

The third activity that I planned with Stacy was talking about things that have

already happened in her life, and using past, present and future tense verbs –

temporal language. The discussion that developed was about her sisters and who

was born first, second and last. We talked about who is the oldest and who is the

youngest and each of their ages today. Then we talked about the future when her

little sister will be four years old like Stacy, and she will come to preschool.

There were several times that Stacy became mixed up: one time she said that she

is the youngest, another time she said that her oldest sister was born first and then

her little sister came next. Temporal terms can be a difficult concept for

preschoolers to grasp, especially regarding topics that do not occur on a consistent

or daily basis. (Bjorklund, 2012, p. 243) Stacy enjoyed telling me about her

sisters and talking about being a baby. In this activity there was meaningful

communication that was shared in a warm and supportive environment and

correct temporal language was modeled for Stacy. I am hopeful that this

discussion, along with many others in Stacy’s life, will be a “template for

learning.” (Bodrova and Leong, 2007, p. 85).

The last activity that I planned and implemented involved using a Social Story

(that I wrote) entitled Being A Friend. I planned two activities around this story.

The first was to read and discuss the story together. I had written out questions

using some of the specific words which can change the meaning of questions,

such as: What else do friends do? Which of these do you do? I chose these

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questions and words because they had grammatical nuances that Stacy seems to

miss. I also wanted to focus on friendship skills such as: sharing and using words

to negotiate. I enjoyed reading this story with Stacy and was surprised at her

candid and open remarks regarding who she is as a friend. The book had

statements like: “I am a friend when I talk to others and tell them what I am

thinking and feeling.” After I read the story to Stacy, we began again and I said

“Which of these do you do?” Stacy said that she did not tell others her thoughts

and feelings and that she does not take turns, and that she does not treat others

kindly “’cause I don’t like to.” I asked her “When is it hard to be kind?” and

Stacy said when she talked to people. I asked “Is it because they don’t always

understand you?” and Stacy nodded yes. Then she said “Like L., I try to talk to

L. and he won’t listen to me.” I asked her “What do you do?” and she responded

“ I jus go away. I jus feel I not talk to people.” Then I asked “What else could

you do?” and Stacy said “I can just walk away. I can just say o.k.” I reminded

her that sometimes there are other ways to help people understand, like saying

things a different way or pointing to things, and sometimes we can draw things

and/or write words to our friends. Then I said “Which one would you like to try?

We can make a plan.” Stacy was interested in drawing a picture for L. and we

planned that she could do that the next day. She seemed happy and excited about

the idea.

The second part of the activity was to implement Stacy’s plan. Stacy had said that

she would like to draw a picture for L. and have me write her words. Although

we planned to do this the next day, she came back to me later in the day and told

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me that she wanted to make the picture for L. “now.” She drew a picture of a

smiling person and asked me to write: “L, You’re my best friend and I like you.”

Then she signed her name. She chose to put it in his cubby as a surprise. Stacy’s

picture and note to L. resulted in a positive outcome. L. made pictures for Stacy

at his home and put them in her cubby the next day. A friendship has budded and

it will be fun to see how it develops. This activity was very rewarding. I learned

more about Stacy’s thinking, we developed another strategy of communicating

with friends (in an area where she felt frustrated), and the initiation on Stacy’s

part resulted in her words and actions being appreciated and reciprocated by her

peer. In the future I will seek to continue to employ these strategies with Stacy:

1) Using an external mediator to signal whose turn it is to talk and whose turn it is

to listen when there are disputes with peers; 2) Using tactics to clarify and

enhance communication (including contextual cues, “saying it a different way”,

gestures, drawings, and dictating words) when expressive language is not

understood; and 3) Continuing to engage in meaningful shared activities together

where speech is modeled, communication is experienced, and relationship is

valued.

Conclusion

Stacy demonstrates cognitive development that is progressing in her imaginative

and make-believe play. She engages in dialogue, shares her ideas, and uses

objects and actions in symbolic and representational ways. She is still developing

in her self-regulation skills, at times regulating others when she is not able to

regulate herself. Stacy is also still growing in theory of mind as she begins to

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understand that other people have thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that are different

from her own. Stacy’s language development is younger than her chronological

age and I have expressed concerns in this area. However, through her preschool

experiences she is learning and implementing new strategies that are helping her

to grow in her social and communicative competence. Her overall language and

cognitive development continues to progress through her social cooperative play

with her peers. This type of play creates motivation and a zone of proximal

development for Stacy, facilitating development of her speech, cognition, self-

regulation, and theory of mind. The scaffolding provided by teachers and more

capable peers will continue to support Stacy in her growth. It is my hope that she

will benefit from their areas of expertise -- just as she has been my teacher and

extended my understanding of language and cognitive development in young

children.

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References

Bjorklund, David F. (2012). Children’s thinking: Cognitive development and

individual differences. U.S.A.: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Bodrova, Elena & Leong, Deborah J. (2007). Tools of the mind: the Vygoskian

approach to early childhood education. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:

Pearson Prentice Hall.

Tabors, Patton O. (2008). One child, two languages. Baltimore, Maryland: Paul

H. Brookes Publishing Company.

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Lesson Plans for Child Observation

Needs Assessment: Stacy needs scaffolding in self-regulation skills, learning to

listen to her peers, temporal language, and strategies for communication

skills when she is not understood.

Lesson Plan #1:

Objective: To provide a strategy with an external mediator that will help Stacy to

1) Listen to her peers (& develop theory of mind), and 2) Give her the

opportunity to communicate her thoughts and feelings.

I will plan to act as a moderator when a communication breakdown occurs

between playmates. I will use an external mediator (such as a block, stick,

pen, etc.) to signal whom it is that gets to talk. We will take turns holding

the mediator and I will model the strategy of listening to whomever is

speaking. I will ensure that everyone gets to speak, and then we will

brainstorm solutions to the problem.

Lesson Plan #2:

Objective: To help develop a play plan for the benefit of enhancing play,

developing language skills and executive function.

During (or before) free play, I will assist Stacy with a play plan to think ahead

about the role that she is playing, who she will be interacting with, what

she will be saying and what she will be doing.

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Lesson Plan #3:

Objective: To model temporal language in a meaningful shared activity.

In a one-on-one activity with Stacy, we will talk together about when she was

little, what she does now, and what she will do in the future to help

develop her temporal language.

Lesson Plan #4:

Objective: To help develop self-regulation skills, communication skills, and

theory of mind.

I will read a Social Story to Stacy entitled Being A Friend. Afterwards we will

talk about the specific things that friends do and I will ask questions like:

Which of these do you do? What else could you do? We will also talk

about which things are hard for Stacy to do. Afterwards we will make an

intentional plan of something that Stacy could do to be a friend to another

person. Later I will help Stacy to implement the plan.

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