THE LEXICAL INDICATOR OF SPEECH DEVELOPMENT AT PRESCHOOL CHILDREN WITH DIFFERENT LEVELS OF SELF- REGULATION

Abstract

The article presents the empirical study that has shown the interdependence between the development of regulatory functions and the lexical indicator of speech development at preschoolers. The study included 179 children attending senior groups at kindergartens. The technique of “Associative Series” used to study the speech vocabulary turned out to be an adequate tool assessing senior preschoolers’ lexical development. Significant differences in lexical development of children with high and low levels of regulatory functions were revealed. Children from 5–6 to 7–8 years increase the efficiency of word selection, which indicates that this period is sensitive to the development of this speech component. The efficient solution of the tasks revealing lexical speech development was the most strongly linked with auditory working memory and cognitive flexibility. The efficiency of appeared free associations was linked with spatial working memory; and the so-called directed associations (names of actions and animals) were associated with inhibition. We used cluster analysis to divide the sample into three groups: preschoolers with high, average, low levels of regulatory functions, these group division corresponded also to different lexical speech indicators. This proves that certain level of self-regulation must be achieved for effective speech development and vice versa. Children with poorly developed regulatory functions cope much worse with all tasks for associative series selection in comparison with children having highly developed regulatory functions. The study results did not allowed us to make a conclusion on causative-consecutive links, but showed a two-way link between speech (lexical indicator) and regulatory functions, which is consistent with most studies in this field. Only one indicator of speech development (namely, lexical) was examined, so we are planning to examine links between the development of regulatory functions and all speech indicators to obtain a more comprehensive picture of these two constructs important for the preschool age.