Literature Review Vocabulary Size and Verbal Fluency

Language Sample Analysis
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Introduction
Different aspects of development are measured through an analysis of communication, language, and speech. As stated by Hulit, Howard, and Fahey, to fully understand the factors that contribute to development, one must understand that language and speech exists independently, but both work together to form communication. For instance, speech can exist in the absence of language as seen with infant babbling, and language can exist in the absence of speech as seen with sign language. Speech refers to the oral expression of language that requires the cooperation of resonation, respiration, phonation, and articulation. Language refers to a shared code that makes it possible for a sender and receiver to communicate. Lastly, communication refers to the process of exchanging information. This includes a sender and a receiver who interprets the information, message, or idea given by the sender (2011, p. 3-4).
The purpose of this study is to analyze a language sample of a child focusing on all domains of language: phonology, lexicon, morphosyntax, and pragmatics. The child chosen for this analysis is Mattias, a three year, nine-month-old boy. His family is monolingual English speaking with both parents and an elder sibling at home. Developmental milestones such as walking, crawling, sitting, and self-care skills were reached promptly. Mattias’s parents report that he babbled and cooed as an infant. His first word was spoken at fifteen months. To assess his language skills, a play-based conversational sample was collected in which spontaneous speech was encouraged. The conversational sample will be used to gauge the participant’s language skills.
Literature Review
Vocabulary Size and Verbal Fluency
As confirmed in a study on lexical access, when compared to bilinguals, monolinguals usually maintain a broader vocabulary in a specific language, which increases monolinguals’ efficiency of word retrieval (Bialystok et al., 2008). Additionally, monolinguals access words more frequently compared to bilinguals in a specific language. In a task that involved letter fluency, the study confirmed that monolinguals easily responded to the letter cue with more words compared to bilinguals (Bialystok et al., 2008). In a separate study on creative functioning, the researchers discovered that monolinguals performed better on flexibility and fluency than bilinguals (Torrance et al., 1970).
Non-Verbal and Verbal Cognitive Development
According to a study conducted by the University of York, which was later published in Child Development Journal, the effects of the development of a child’s non-verbal and verbal language were examined and matched between bilingual and monolingual children in a specific language. Researchers compared one-hundred, six-year-old bilingual and monolingual children (bilingual in French and English, bilingual in Spanish and English, bilingual in English and Mandarin, and monolingual in English). The study tested their non-verbal and verbal communication cognitive development. The study considered factors such as educational experience, cultural background, and similarity of the language. Most of the students were from public schools from various locations, and their economic and social backgrounds were similar. Results from the study indicate that in the early stages of the child, multilingual children are different from each other in their cognitive skills development and language; multilingual children are also different when compared to monolingual children. The study also confirmed that multilingual children are slower when it comes to building up their vocabularies in both languages compared to monolingual children.
Phonological Awareness
In a study on phonological awareness, phonological awareness in bilingual and monolingual five-year-olds was examined. Sixty-eight children from Cyprus and Britain matched by verbal and non-verbal IQ, gender, and age were separated into four groups: two monolinguals (English, Greek) and two bilinguals (Greek-English, English-Greek). A set of six phonological tasks was used to assess the performance of the four groups. Monolingual children were given the phonological tasks in their native/first language only, whereas the bilingual children were given Greek and English versions of the same task. The results obtained from the study indicated that bilingual English-Greek children performed better than monolingual English children (Loizou & Stuart, 2003).
Abstract Morphosyntax
A study conducted by Rissman et al. determined that young English-speaking children regularly omit auxiliary verbs from their speech. Instead of producing the more adult-like “baby is crying,” they produce utterances such as “baby crying” (2013). Studies show that when it comes to proficiency, children’s proficiency with auxiliary BE is associated with frequency statistics in the input, which has led some researchers to debate that children’s auxiliary is slow to develop and item specific. In a priming experiment which involved two and three-year-old children, the children were investigated to determine whether the auxiliary are and is were part of an abstract syntactic frame. The experiment tested whether children could be primed to increase their auxiliary production when the target and prime differed by a verb, subject, and auxiliary type (are and is). The results of the experiment determined that these patterns of priming indicate that children represent auxiliary BE as part of an abstract syntactic frame that minimally contains are and is (Rissman et al., 2013).
Children’s Pragmatic Competence
In his 2011 study, Toshihiko Suzuki attempts to demonstrate the “pragmatic competence” by examining American elementary school children who are monolingual English speakers through an assessment of spoken data provided by students aged eight to ten years in San Francisco. The research project was designed to (1) reveal the pragmatic ability of English speaking children to verbally realize their intentions in the form of “speech acts (2) consider its importance in human language acquisition with respect to “pragmatic development” and (3) apply the findings of the research to English Literature Teaching in Japan. The results of this study confirm that positive direction strategies such as complimenting, apologizing, and thanking were commonly adopted. The findings indicate that people of different ages follow general rules for performing speech (Suzuki, 2007).
Mental Well-Being of Monolinguals
According to a study conducted in Canada, it has been evidenced that monolinguals were shoddier at the outset of senility compared to bilinguals. According to the study, it appears that being bilingual is linked to a four-year delay of dementia. Snippets of what was proven in the study are reflected in a study conducted by Bialystok in which he asserts that lifelong bilingualism has protective effects on delaying the onset of dementia. Various studies assert that bilingualism promotes cognitive reserve by preventing the effects associated with cognitive delay and prolonging the outset of illnesses such as dementia. According to Bialystok, cognitive reserve is the idea that involvement in stimulating mental or physical activity maintains cognitive functioning (2012). As such, knowing multiple languages is likened to stimulating mental activity. To determine if bilingualism promotes cognitive reserve, hospital records of bilingual and monolingual patients who have dementia were examined. The researchers discovered that bilingualism has protective effects on delaying the outset of dementia by four years (Bialystok et al., 2012). This finding strengthens the fact that bilinguals are more advantaged because they can speak two languages. A possible reason for this finding is that knowledge of more than one language keeps the brain alert and thus more mentally aware for an extended period.
Language and Memory Performance
In a memory-based study performed at the University of Florida, English monolinguals were compared to Native-English bilinguals. The study confirmed that there was a delayed response from bilinguals on lexical decision tasks and tasks that required a latency of recognition of abstract words (Ransdell & Fischer, 1987). For these two tasks, data-driven and language-specific processes were more common. The study was unlike prior studies which assert that there is more familiarity with the dominant language. A possible reason for the bilingual disadvantage could be attributed to differential familiarity with the dominant language (Mägiste, 1980). Torrance et al. stated that for bilinguals, the disadvantage could be a result of acquiring and using a second ...