Overview of Communication Skills (continued)

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Children's use of art, symbols, and language to represent objects, people, and events is called symbolic thinking. The ability to think symbolically is directly related to language development (Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1986). Symbolic thought is evident in preschoolers' dreams, imagery, and play. This form of thought allows children to start fantasizing and creating novel images by manipulating symbols in complex and personal ways. Children's abilities to use symbolic thinking depends on prior development of cognitive abilities that allow them to think about, organize, and process information internally (Norman & McCormick, 1993),

Most toddlers (one to two years old) remember names of objects and pictures. They will imitate and use these names at a later time. They point to toys, pictures in a book, or parts of the body when named. They gradually begin to name objects themselves. In general, children comprehend more language than they can produce (Blank, Rose, & Berlin, 1978). For example, they may be able to respond appropriately to an adult saying, "Give me your shoes," yet be unable to produce the phrase, "Give me your shoes." During the first two years of development, most children without developmental disabilities use single words. Often these words represent a sentence. An example of a one-word sentence, called a holophrase, is when a child says, "juice!" The child is likely to be communicating, "I want a drink of juice!" (Yoder & Warren, 1993; Bloom & Lahey, 1978).

During the second year of life, short sentences begin to be a part of children's language. These sentences are typically composed of a verb and other words. Toddlers typically have acquired a vocabulary consisting of 25 to 300 words (Bloom, 1991), "Me do," "My ball," and "Mine!" are frequent words a two-year-old uses. These two-word utterances are likely to include telegraphic speech, which includes core words (key verbs and nouns) and omits less important words. For example, a toddler is likely to say, "more juice," rather than, "I want more juice." Large variations in toddlers' speech often occur. Although rare, some toddlers appear to be very reluctant to speak (selectively mute), but once they do, they typically display a rapid growth of vocabulary (Warren & Kaiser, 1988).

Wide variations in the number of words found in children's sentences are common even for children the same age. One method used by psycholinguists (psychologists who study language development) to measure children's language development is mean length of utterance (MLU). MLU increases gradually with age. The average sentence length for a child two years old is two words. Children typically use sentences about three to six words in length by three to four years of age (Hoffnung, 1989).

Children two to four years old develop language skills consisting of communicative and noncommunicative language. Communicative language involves children's ability to tell others what and how they themselves are thinking. Noncommunicative language consists of repetition, monologue, and collective monologue. Repetition is shown when children repeat what others say (Berko Gleason, 1989). This is frequently observed when children have older siblings or are in a preschool or daycare setting. Children often repeat someone else's statement, acting as if it is their own.