Case Background
All animal species communicate distinctly and collaboratively, with children’s ability to master their language improving over time. Human beings are the most advanced speakers, and analyzing their language explores word choice, tone, sentence structure, and figures of speech. This article presents the language analysis of K., a three-year-old girl living with her parents in California.
K. speaks native English. The choice of language sample depends on various factors, including the nature of the interactions, materials used, sample size, the context of the situation, and the method of recording. In this context, the sample is extracted from the 22-minute kitchen play, during which the child speaks 133 times.
The play is set in a living room, but it is more concerned with kitchen behavior. It is about one o’clock, and K. is supposedly hungry, yearning for lunch. There are only two participants, one adult and one child, and the context determining the words spoken and actions performed is dynamic.
The primary materials employed in the play are a toy kitchen and food. There are only two speakers—an adult and a child—and the context actively influences both the words said and the actions taken. A toy kitchen and food are used as the play’s major props.
Descriptive Play Analysis
Descriptive analysis helps draw patterns from numerical, visual, or textual data. The play begins with the adult speaking to the child while hiding toy food behind her back. The child is grateful upon receiving the toy food, which suggests a positive upbringing and the development of her communication skills.
When the adult asks to open the child’s toy food, she quickly agrees, naming all the foods while they are still packaged. The toy food set comprises several items, including mustard, hot dog, wrap, cheese, yogurt, and a wrap, indicating that the child knows her foods, as acknowledged by the adult. The child continuously labels and names food items.
Children are naturally inquisitive, as is evident when K. asks about the origin of the food items. Once the food package is opened, the child throws the trash in the garbage. The adult then helps the child remove the food items. The child offers the adult bread and cheese. It illustrates how generous K. is, despite having been gifted all the food items she holds.
The food session follows a play where K. almost falls “like a monkey”. K. eats all the food items handed over to her. Numerous food items are given to K., who pretends to eat. Later, the two embark on drinking juice and washing the utensils.
Summary
Performance Profile
The play takes place in a kitchen where two characters, an adult and a child, converse, eat, drink, and wash utensils. There is constant conversation, passing over of food items, and continuous gestures such as facial expressions. The performance of K.’s speech, as measured in Templin’s Token Ratio and Mean length of utterance, of 2.69 and 0.56, is calculated in Tables 4 and 3, respectively.
K. is a three-year-old girl who understands her favorite foods. She is a bright and grateful girl who appreciates the essence of thanking others for their good deeds. For instance, when she receives food from an adult, the response is “thank you” as she happily places it on her head.
The fact that K. knows the names of her favorite foods makes her knowledgeable about them. Erudite individuals possess a comprehensive understanding of various facts about a given topic. In this context, K. can differentiate food items by looking at the packaging. She also knows where the food items should come from and confirms her consciousness when the adult acknowledges buying them from Target. K. is a neat and hygienic child, as she knows, appreciates, acknowledges, and practices throwing trash into the garbage. This is an implication of her upbringing.
Strengths
The play exhibits several strengths that make it ideal for studying K.’s behavioral and psychological development. First, there is a rich “kitchen-bound “vocabulary. There is extensive use of literary devices, such as humor, when K. almost “falls like a monkey”. First, using allusion to describe the toy kitchen, food, garbage, trash, and cleaning process is a powerful literary tool.
The play employs diction to convey the message of the characters and the plot. The play is primarily based on informal diction, as the characters discuss day-to-day activities, making the play more conversational. The play embraces allegory to describe the characters and the scene. K. speaks less than the adults, but her communication is presented through gestures.
Another strength of the play can be attributed to its length. It is only twenty-two minutes, making it easy to view and analyze. Establishing details in extended plays is challenging, as much of the content can diminish human concentration and comprehension. The limited nature of the play (in the kitchen) facilitates the process of studying, evaluating, and concluding K.’s performance and psychological development.
Challenges
The analysis of art, literature, or plays reveals strengths and weaknesses. However, the traits are only discernible at specific times and conditions. In the case of our play, it is too short and narrow to help extract major features.
The limited number of characters (only one adult and a child) makes it challenging to unearth K.’s ideal development and strengths. In addition, the play is limited to the kitchen setup; hence, it is impossible to conclude how the child would perform if she acted in a different setup. The play is also limited to an “eating” context, naturally arousing children’s behavior. Although the child is meant to “act”, she may unknowingly have perceived the toy food items as real food, triggering her excellent performance.
Clinical Impressions
Children’s mental and motor development is critical to parents, caregivers, and medical practitioners. Hambrick et al. (2019) argue that clinical impressions are tests to establish whether a client may have a problem, its possible implications, potential treatment strategies, or effective interventions concerning the patient. The language sample analysis serves as a stepping-stone to identifying normalcy or abnormalities in K.’s growth and development. The child’s words and actions suggest she is progressing well. Since the assessment is based on communication, sciences, and disorders, it suggests proposing correctional interventions if K. is found to have any abnormalities.
Decontextualization
Clinical impressions enable practitioners and professionals to formulate the most effective treatment plan or intervention for patients based on their specific needs and problems. However, that is not the case in this context. Instead, the emphasis is on evaluating the child’s performance as an actor in a play and proposing how she can improve. Positive performance implies that the child exhibits normal development, both mentally and psychologically. The conclusions from K.’s performance in the play can hence be used to recommend any necessary medical or developmental interventions.
Thematic Content
Children’s confidence is usually low; many need boosting as they grow. Based on the given context, K.’s choice of words aligns with the kitchen setup. It shows her high levels of concentration. K.’s involvement in the play is essential in assessing her confidence level.
The thematic content of the case study may be limited to a single context, but it plays a crucial role in demonstrating her level of courage. The exhibited level of confidence indicates normal development in communication. In other words, she shows no abnormalities in her growth and development pattern.
Organization
K. is quickly stimulated by toy food, which is familiar to children. The conversation between the adult and the child exhibits several pragmatic morphemes, such as maintaining eye contact, engaging in social greetings, using gestures, interpersonal interaction (you and me), and social interaction. However, the child’s communication skills in seeking an explanation or sharing knowledge and imagination are absent. This implies that K. is developing normally, as stipulated in Westby’s (2000) development play scale. Detection of discrepancies in child development may trigger necessary medical interventions.
Examination of Self
K. is in Symbolic Level VI and is expected to remember all steps and citations of the play. The child’s performance is impressive, indicating that she has a high ability to remember. Although children learn by repetitively saying or doing the same thing, this is a different context where she has to choose words on the fly (Gerber & Wankoff, 2012).
However, that does not limit K.’s performance, as she demonstrates her ability to recall the names of foods she has encountered before. The flow of the child’s words and actions in the video is seamless. It is an illustration of the high levels of courage K. portrays.
A detailed valuation of K. reveals normalcy, intelligence, knowledge, and composure. Despite her limited ability (due to her young age), her performance is impressive and way above conventional standards. The fact that she can fit in the shoes of an actor, exhibiting courage, confidence, knowledge, and gratitude, shows that she is developing and growing normally. For instance, K. hands back the toy food to the adult for it to be opened. K. labels each toy-food item with a name and also attempts to feed the adult with her prepared cheese.
Child’s Play Relative to Her Abilities
K. is three years old and belongs to Symbolic Level VI. The study of a child’s play in relation to their abilities explores three main issues: courage, memory, and the exhibition of competence. Courage is the ability to carry out a task that is presumably beyond one’s ability. The levels of competence and memory ability in children increase as they grow. Tables 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the appendix were used in data collection and analysis.
Grammatical Morphemes
The courage of children is naturally low, especially in the presence of strangers or when subjected to new conditions. The developmental scale of 2000 suggests that a child’s courage can be assessed in several ways, including mastery of new skills, making choices, persistence in the face of frustration, and resisting peer pressure (Westby, 2000). Children use fewer words than adults due to limited vocabulary (Epstein, n.d).
K. uses 269 morphemes in 100 utterances, as indicated in Table 3. There are 10 morphemes in the upper bound, while only one morpheme exists in the lower. The mean length of utterance (MLU) is 2.69. A detailed analysis is provided in the grammatical morphemes appendix section (Table 3).
The criteria for identifying grammatical morphemes are presented in Table 6, which serves as a checklist. The checklist was used to evaluate the play in two factions: first, decontextualization, organization, thematic content, and evaluation of self, and second, functioning, forms, and content. The first part of the analysis focused on the play itself, while the second part examined the language used.
Use of Forms
Content
Type Token Ratio Form
The type token ratio form is provided in Table 4. K. spoke 149 words, out of which 83 were distinct. This implies she repeated 66 words. Her TTR is computed as shown in the equation below. A detailed summary of the TTR data is presented in Table 4, with emphasis on different parts of speech. The TTR value implies K.’s ability to use unique words is above average.
Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)
K. used 193 out of the 269 morphemes, which are summarized in Table 3. The MMU can be computed as follows:
Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)
K. used 193 out of the 269 morphemes are summarized in table 3. The MMU can be computed as follows:
The upper bound length was 10, while the lower bound length was one morpheme, respectively. The MMU of a normal child within the symbolic level VI is 3.0 (Westby, 2000). With an MMU of 2.69, K.’s development can be viewed as abnormal (in this context), and necessary interventions should be undertaken.
Length of Distribution Form
The length distribution form is presented in Table 5. It presents a summary of the length of morphemes and the number of morphemes. The majority of the morphemes had a length of one or three, accounting for 31% and 21% of the total morphemes, respectively. The average MLU was 2.69, which is below the average (3.0) of normal children. The emphasis on shorter morphemes indicates K. is yet to master longer ones, which is essential for her language and communication development.
Grammatical Morphemes
K. used 10 grammatical morphemes out of the possible 14, as shown in Table 2. This indicates that her overall grammatical morpheme usage is at 71%. The average usage percentage was 89.6 (referring to the morphemes used only). A detailed summary is presented in Table 2 in the appendix section. The results show that K. is yet to grasp all grammatical morphemes.
Forms
Pragmatics Checklist
Four primary forms are employed in this data collection analysis. The data is presented in the pragmatic analysis, grammatical morphemes, calculation of the mean length of utterance, and the Type-Token ratio. The pragmatic list categorizes the child’s communication skills as “present”, “not present”, or “gestures”.
The grammatical morphemes form a tally of the different lexemes as learned and used by K. The mean length of utterance is computed from the distribution of respective lexemes as summarized in Table 3. The type-token ratio is provided in Table 4 and contains a list of all parts of speech as used by the child. Nouns, pronouns, and proverbs were the most dominant, with 29, 26, and 28 usages.
References
Epstein, B. (n.d). Overview of language acquisition.
Gerber, S., & Wankoff, L. (2012). Historical and contemporary views of language learning. Language development: Foundations, processes, and clinical applications, 21-43.
Hambrick, E. P., Brawner, T. W., Perry, B. D., Brandt, K., Hofmeister, C., & Collins, J. O. (2019). Beyond the ACE score: Examining relationships between timing of developmental adversity, relational health and developmental outcomes in children. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 33(3), 238-247. Web.
Westby, C. (2000). A scale for assessing the development of children’s play. Play diagnosis and assessment, 2.
Appendix
Pragmatics Checklist
Table 1. Pragmatics Checklist
Grammatical Morphemes
Table 2. Grammatical Morphemes
Mean Length of Utterance: Tally Distribution Form
Table 3. Tally Distribution Form
Subtotal 2: Total # of Morphemes on p. 2,3,4= 193
76 + 193 = 269 = Total # Morphemes
Total # of Morphemes = 269 = 2.69 = Mean Length of Utterance
Total # of Utterances 100
Upper bound length = 10 morphemes
Lower bound length = 1 morphemes
Templin’s Type Token Ratio
50 Utterances # 36-85
Table 4. Templin’s Type Token Ratio
Type-Token Ration (TTR) = Total Number of Different Words/Total Number of Words = 83/149=.05570=0.56
Length Distribution Form
Table 5. Length Distribution Form
Upper Bound Length = 10 morphemes
Lower Bound Length = 1 morpheme
Observation Tool for Assessing Plays
Table 6. Checklist developmental play scale