Children's Talk Research Articles

Sociocultural Discourse Analysis of the “New Left” in the USA by Tom Heyden: Linguistic Characteristics and Socio-Cultural Viewpoints

Sociocultural discourse analysis is a methodology for studying the use of language for collective thinking. It was specifically designed for studying the talk of children working together in a group in a classroom, but it has also been used for studying talk amongst adults. In addition, the developing analysis was augmented by SD–informed approaches that dealt with discourse data at word-level and that looked to make apparent any patterns across the body of the discourse data. Tom Hayden was a leader of the “New Left” organization “Students for a Democratic Society” (SDS) and an author of their main document the Port-Huron Statement (1962), an anti-war activist, a defendant in the case of “Chicago Seven” in 1968, a lawmaker with 18 years of experience and an initiator of major social, interracial and economic programs, a university professor and an author of more than 20 books of articles, a member of the Advisory Council of the “Progressive Democrats of America”, belonging to the left wing of the US Democratic Party. Hayden began journalistic activities early. We conclude with some comments about the value of this methodological approach for examining professional discourse more widely.

P164 Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Interactive and Engaging Nutrition Education Curriculum for Children

Objective The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the updated Food, Fun and Reading (FFR) curriculum using parent reported changes in child eating behaviors and food-related attitudes and participants’ recognition of foods in the five MyPlate food groups. Use of Theory or Research Nutrition education for young children is more effective when developmentally appropriate, interactive, and experiential activities are included in the curriculum. Including illustrated stories has also been found to increase engagement and improve information retention. The FFR curriculum utilizes both of these strategies. Target Audience The FFR curriculum was used with children from pre-Kindergarten through 1st grade. Program Description FFR is a six-lesson series that engages participants with an interactive MyPlate lesson, a physical activity game, and a child-friendly healthy recipe tasting. The nutrition topic is reinforced by reading a related food-focused story. The original FFR curriculum was developed by University of Vermont Extension in the late 1990s and has recently been updated. Evaluation Methods A retrospective post-pre evaluation was distributed to parents to assess changes in child eating behaviors and food-related attitudes. Pre and post evaluations were given to participants to assess overall changes in participants’ recognition of foods in the five MyPlate food groups. Results Parent survey data were analyzed using a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. The parent surveys (n = 31) indicated a statistically significant increase in the frequency of children talking about healthy foods (P Conclusion The updated FFR curriculum may be an effective tool for improving knowledge and attitudes, and changing food-related behaviors among participants. Funding None.

‘The love is spread out’: how birth children talk about their experiences of living with foster children

This article examines the experiences of birth children with a foster child (or children) in their family. Specifically, it explores how birth children’s attachment history influences how they disc...

Why Is It Just So Hard? Making Sense of End-of-Life Communication Between Adult Children and Their Terminally Ill Parental Figures.

The aging population in the United States is predicted to become one fifth of the population by 2050. With that increase, more individuals in the country will be experiencing chronic health conditions and the need for care, with end of life (EoL) becoming more of a topic that needs to be discussed. This study aims to explore the ways adult children talk to their parents about EoL, death, and dying. We discovered six themes: protection, meeting needs, guilt and regret, control, family dynamics, and communication type. Each of these was prevalent in responses to how adult children cope, how they cared for their parent, and how hope played into the interactions. We believe these themes will be helpful in developing a quantitative scale to study EoL further and be practical in helping adult children cope following death of their parent.

How U.S. And Chinese children talk about personal, moral and conventional choices

There is agreement among children across cultures that matters of personal preference can be freely chosen, while moral actions are obligatory. Children’s beliefs about actions that violate norms and conventions are more culturally variable. This study explores children’s reasoning about personal (toy preference), moral (sharing vs stealing), and conventional (artifact use) choices among five- to seven-year-olds (N = 62; M = 6.39, SD = 0.75) in the U.S. and China by asking them to tell stories to accompany pictures showing a character prior to making decision and two possible post-decision outcomes for each domain. We found cultural similarities in children’s stories about personal and moral issues: children in both cultures emphasized desires (“wanting” and “liking”) when talking about toy preferences and combined an emphasis on evaluations and desires when talking about sharing or stealing. We found cultural differences in children’s storytelling about artifact conventions: U.S. children’s stories about this conventional choice contained more mental state language, while Chinese children’s stories contained more evaluative language. We compared children’s stories to simple forced-choice judgments of possibility and permissibility, and discussed how together they paint a richer picture of emerging cultural differences in choice construal.

Using picture books to develop critical visual literacy in primary schools: challenges of a dialogic approach

AbstractThis paper presents findings from a collaborative project on critical visual literacy in primary schools. In the project, we (a researcher and a teacher) implemented a series of picture book discussions with children in years 5 and 6. Our first aim was to develop the children's ability to analyse the visual images in picture books and how authors/illustrators use these, together with writing, to communicate specific ideas. The second aim was to promote a dialogic lesson in which the children would lead the talk. In the paper, I discuss the challenges we faced in reaching our aims. My data include observation notes and audio recordings of the sessions and of discussions with the children. In the analysis, I examine the roles we took on, for example, as extenders and clarifiers of the children's talk. However, unbeknown to us at the start, our two project aims turned out to be in conflict with each other. While the children enjoyed looking closely at the pictures and discussing the books' possible meanings, without repeated questions and prompts, they focused on the book as story not on how it was constructed by the author and illustrator. This required a more teacher‐focused approach than what we had planned.

“Say ‘What happened?’ in Hebrew. He does not speak Arabic!” Early language awareness as expressed in verbal and nonverbal interactions in the preschool bilingual classroom

The aim of this longitudinal ethnographic study was to explore how children's verbal and nonverbal behavior reflects their language awareness at a bilingual Arabic–Hebrew-speaking preschool in Israel. We adopted the perspective that children's L2 acquisition is situated within the social events and interactional practices of the classroom community. We took a close look at six bilingual 3-year-old children—three L1 Arabic-speaking children and three L1 Hebrew-speaking children. To enhance the credibility of our study, we triangulated the collected observations of the children's talk via teachers and parents’ testimonies. The analysis revealed that children applied diverse verbal and nonverbal mediating cues to solve their interlocutors’ communicative troubles. Their pragmatic awareness of the interlocutors’ communicative troubles was encouraged by a unique classroom context where the teachers stimulated children's language mediation and peers’ backup. The study is beneficial for language teachers’ understanding of how they can support children's language awareness.

“Why Have You Bought a Black Doll?” How Young Children Talk about Diversity

The qualitative Early Childhood research project analyzes how children, aged five to six years, talk about the dimensions of diversity they recognize in their kindergarten and how two kindergartens in Austria deal with diversity. The children talk about age, gender, size, language, religion, different countries of origin, and skin colors. With regard to the kindergarten organization, there is a tendency toward normativity in dealing with some dimensions of diversity. Religious education may contribute to develop safe and brave spaces where differences are allowed and discrimination against children is avoided.

Interaction effect of background sound type and sound pressure level on children of primary schools in the Netherlands

The acoustic conditions of classrooms received a lot of attention in the last decades because of its important role in school children’s comfort and performance. In a previous field study of 54 classrooms from 21 schools in the Netherlands, more than 85% of the 1145 primary school children reported that they were bothered by noise in the classroom. The objective of this study is to identify the effect of background sounds on children’s performance, sound evaluation and influence assessment based on a lab study conducted in the SenseLab. 335 school children (9 to 13 years old) from the previous studied schools participated in the lab study. They were subjected to a series of listening tests and evaluations in two acoustic test chambers (acoustically treated or untreated) with one of seven randomly played background sounds: 45 dB(A) or 60 dB(A) traffic noise, 45 dB(A) or 60 dB(A) children talking, 45 dB(A) or 60 dB(A) music, or no sound (≈30 dB(A)). A two-way ANOVA was applied to analyse the interaction effect of sound type and sound pressure level (SPL) on children’s performance, sound evaluation and influence assessment in each of the chambers. Statistically significant interactions between the impact of sound type and SPL on children’s phonological processing performance and their influence assessments were found in the untreated chamber.

The Impact of the "Semente" Program on the Family-Focused Practice of Mental Health Professionals in Portugal.

Background: Children of parents with mental illness (COPMI) are a high-risk group. There is a strong association between parents’ psychiatric disorders and the incidence of psychopathology in their children. These children need to be identified and supported by mental health workers early, and hence, clinical practice in adult mental health services needs to change from a focus on individual patients to a more systemic family focus. “Semente,” a mental health promotion program developed by the Psychiatry Service of Fernando Fonseca hospital (Lisbon, Portugal), had been established to identify these children and families and promote their mental health, by decreasing the impact of risk factors and promoting protective factors. The program included preventive COPMI interventions and implementation of activities offered to families with children in the mental health care. The aim of the present study was to evaluate changes in mental health care after the training in “Child Talks” intervention (two to three psycho-educational meetings with parents and children) and implementation of the “Semente” program. Methods: Participants (N = 51) were all professionals from Psychiatric Service of Fernando Fonseca Hospital who received Child Talks training. The Family-Focused Mental Health Practice Questionnaire (FFMPQ) was used to measure change in professionals’ attitudes, knowledge, confidence, and organizational structure in working with these families. All participants filled in the questionnaire before training and 10 months later. Results: The results showed that, from pre- to post-measurement, the professionals changed clinical practice significantly. The largest changes were visible in the improved provision of support at the workplace for family-focused practice and the clarity and availability of the policies and procedures. Furthermore, the skill and knowledge of the mental health workers showed significant improvement at posttest. Conclusion: The positive results of this study were not unexpected; the training, implementation of routines, and procedures as well as workplace support were aims of the “Semente” program. Interpretation of the results should be taken with caution because of the small sample and the lower reliability of some of scales of the FFMPQ. The results indicate that professionals moved from patient focus to family focus during the implementation of the “Semente” program.

Mealtimes in Head Start pre-k classrooms: examining language-promoting opportunities in a hybrid space.

In this study we sought to identify profiles of talk during Head Start preschool mealtime conversations involving teachers and students. Videos of 44 Head Start classrooms' lunch interactions were analyzed for the ratio of teacher-child talk and amount of academic vocabulary, and then coded for instances of academic/food, social/personal, and management talk to highlight the degree of hybridity of talk within this unique setting. Cluster analysis revealed four distinct patterns of teacher-child mealtime interactions in 44 Head Start preschool classrooms: classroom discourse, home discourse, hybrid-low, and hybrid-high. Multilevel models further demonstrated a relationship among these clusters of teacher-child interactions and children's end-of-year expressive vocabulary scores controlling for ratio of teacher-child talk and pre-test scores. Children in classrooms displaying a hybrid style of mealtime discourse made the greatest gains on measures of expressive vocabulary in contrast to their peers in classrooms displaying other discourse styles.

Using sociocultural discourse analysis to analyse professional discourse

Abstract Sociocultural discourse analysis is a methodology for studying the use of language for collective thinking. It was specifically designed for studying the talk of children working together in a group in a classroom, but it has also been used for studying talk amongst adults. In this article we discuss its use, in an adapted form, for analysing the professional discussions of examiners who are involved in making assessments of the essays of school students. We explain how and why the methodology was chosen and adapted, and show what its use reveals about collective intellectual activity in this particular context. We conclude with some comments about the value of this methodological approach for examining professional discourse more widely.

Validity and reliability of the Intelligibility in Context Scale: European Portuguese version

ABSTRACTThe purpose of the study was to evaluate the validity, reliability, sensitivity and specificity of the European-Portuguese version of the Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS-EP).Seventy-six children (age: M = 60.6, SD = 8.1 months), 25 having a parent or teacher concern about how they talked and 51 with no concern, were assessed with the phonetic-phonological test (TFF-ALPE) to calculate the following severity measures: percentage of phonemes correct (PPC), percentage of consonants correct (PCC), and percentage of vowels correct (PVC). Parents also filled out a questionnaire about their child’s development (e.g. concern about how the child talks). The ICS was then completed by parents to estimate their children’s intelligibility with different communicative partners.The results showed that item-level scores were different according to communicative partners. The mean ICS score for the whole sample was 4.5 (SD = 0.6), showing that children were “usually” to “always” intelligible. The ICS had excellent internal consistency (α = 0.96). Children with parental concern about their speech presented significantly lower mean scores (M = 3.91, SD = 0.59) than children without parental concerns (M = 4.78, SD = 0.36). There was a positive correlation between the ICS scores and PPC (r = .655), PCC (r = .654), and PVC (r = .588). A simple linear model was also obtained between the ICS mean score and the severity measures analyzed. High values were obtained for sensitivity (0.80) and specificity (0.84), using a cut-off point of 4.36.We conclude that the ICS-EP has good psychometric properties, suggesting it to be a valid tool for estimating children’s intelligibility when talking with different communicative partners. Therefore, this version of the ICS can be used as a screening measure for children’s speech intelligibility.

An enhanced eBook facilitates parent–child talk during shared reading by families of low socioeconomic status

Language input plays a key role in children’s language development, but children from families of low socioeconomic status often get much less input compared to more advantaged peers. In “dialogic reading” (Whitehurst et al., 1988), parents are trained to ask children open-ended questions while reading, which effectively builds expressive vocabulary in at-risk children. In the research reported here, a dialogic questioning character in a narrated eBook provided effortless support for parents to ask questions while reading. Parents of lower socioeconomic status talked more than three times as much with their children using significantly more utterances and unique words when using the eBook with questioner, compared to parents using the unmodified eBook. Children also talked much more, with more varied language, in this condition. By the end of the session, parents took over asking their own unprompted questions and engaged in more conversational turns with their children. This intervention has promise to increase parent–child conversation to help bridge the word gap.

Socialization of Pain Memories: Parent-Child Reminiscing About Past Painful and Sad Events.

Parent-child reminiscing about past negative events has been linked to a host of developmental outcomes. Previous research has identified two distinct between-parent reminiscing styles, wherein parents who are more elaborative (vs. repetitive) have children with more optimal outcomes. To date, however, research has not examined how parents and children talk about past painful experiences nor compared parent-child reminiscing about past painful versus other distressing events despite key developmental differences in how young children respond to pain versus sadness in others. This study aimed to fill that gap. Seventy-eight children aged 4 to 7 years underwent a tonsillectomy. Two weeks postsurgery, children and one of their parents discussed past autobiographical events (i.e., the tonsillectomy, another painful event, a sad event). Parent-child conversations were coded using established coding schemes to capture parental reminiscing style, content, and autonomy support. Findings revealed robust differences in parent-child reminiscing about painful versus sad events. Parents were less elaborative, used less emotionally negative words and explanations, and were less supportive of their children's autonomy while reminiscing about past painful versus sad events. These findings demonstrate that through reminiscing, parents may socialize children about pain in a way that is different from other distressing events (e.g., sadness). Future research should examine the influence of differential reminiscing about pain versus sadness on developmental and health outcomes.

How Classroom Conversations Unfold: Exploring Teacher–Child Exchanges During Shared Book Reading

ABSTRACTResearch Findings: This study examined how teacher–child conversations unfold during shared book reading in Head Start classrooms as well as the relations between that talk and children’s vocabulary learning. Book reading experiences in 27 Head Start classrooms were videotaped and coded for teacher talk, child responses, teacher follow-up remarks, and teacher wait time; we also assessed children’s vocabulary learning. Findings indicated that Head Start teachers infrequently asked open prompts or provided book-related comments; the predominant tool used in shared reading was the closed prompt. Teachers generally accepted 1 answer per question, and children’s answers were nearly always correct. Wait time was rarely observed. Across the sample, more child talk was predictive of stronger child vocabulary learning. For children with low initial vocabulary skills, learning was also linked to more expository comments by teachers. Practice or Policy: Findings help to map out the sequence of instructional events that make up preschool classroom conversations and provide insight into potential levers for improvement.

Relationship Between Laryngeal Signs and Symptoms, Acoustic Measures, and Quality of Life in Finnish Primary and Kindergarten School Teachers

This study investigated the relationship between the acoustic measure smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPS), teacher's quality of life as measured by the voice activity and participation profile (VAPP), laryngeal signs and symptoms, voice related health problems and laryngoscopic findings in Finnish teachers. The relationship between CPPS and sound pressure level (SPL) was also assessed. Vowel and text samples from 183 healthy Finnish teachers (99 kindergarten teachers [KT] and 84 primary school teachers [PST]) were analyzed for CPPS. Text reading was recorded in conversational loudness by PST, and KT were recorded wearing headphones, while listening to a masking noise of children talking to simulate their classroom voice and environment. CPPS values were correlated with the VAPP, self-reported laryngeal signs and symptoms, voice related health variables, and laryngoscopic findings. There was a significant difference between the two groups for CPPS text, PST showed significantly lower CPPS values (10.44) than KT (11.52). There was no difference between the two groups for CPPS vowel phonation. There was a significant correlation between SPL text and CPPS text for KT (P < 0.001, r = 0.43) but not for PST (P < 0.10, r = 0.16). There was a significant correlation between SPL vowel and CPPS vowel for both PST (P < 0.001, r = 0.47) and KT (P < 0.001, r = 0.45). CPPS did not correlate with the VAPP, laryngeal signs and symptoms, health variables or laryngeal findings. Factorial analysis of variance resulted in a significant relationship between the VAPP, laryngeal signs and symptoms, and teacher type. Teacher type and symptoms had a significant effect on VAPP scores. In the present work CPPS does not correlate with vocal health indicators of functionally healthy teachers. CPPS was significantly influenced by differences in speaking voice SPL, emphasizing the impact of recording conditions and technique. There was a significant relationship between laryngeal signs and symptoms, teacher type and the VAPP. Laryngeal signs and symptoms and teacher type are important variables and should be included in the clinical evaluation of occupational voice users, and voice problems.

‘My nose is running like a pound of butter’: exploring young children’s humour

ABSTRACT This paper sets out to explore the nature of the humour generated when pairs of young children talk and draw together. Emphasis is on children’s use of language since most of our humorous instances are expressed verbally rather than visually. Humour’s various features proved to be highly complicated, however, as examples often transcend boundaries, so in order to facilitate debate our findings were classified and discussed under the following headings: preposterous statements, exaggeration and humorous anecdotes; telling jokes; singing and chanting, playing with words, and rhyming and repeating; bodily functions, body parts and nakedness; narrative humour related to drawing. Although we found many common elements, humour, in terms of its development and progression, appeared to depend on an increasing ability to manipulate language, a deepening understanding of the cultural context in which children lived and overall, a particularly strong sense of the absurd.

Biolumina, and: Calling Just to Say, and: Animalia, and: Expecting, and: Us, Retrograde

Biolumina, and: Calling Just to Say, and: Animalia, and: Expecting, and: Us, Retrograde Babette Cieskowski (bio) Biolumina Sunrise, Florida In Sunrise, I wanted youonly once, sitting on the softrotting pier, legs dangling likebait in the wind. Looking down,I wondered what would get to mefirst—some black-eyed omenwith teeth like mine, stainedand crooked like a car crash,some white-tipped, ancient thingwith a taste for something pink.I welcomed it, wanted the saltand pulse to chew me into somethingnew, to take me to a place wherevision is revised, tailored to thrivein darkness. I thought of youonly once, swimming the seafloor,watching the scraps from abovesink to the bottom like snow. Calling Just to Say I'm trying to drink more tea, trying to calm the horseblood in my veins—keep things on an even keel. [End Page 109] I'm trying to talk to you, to tell you that, despitedistance and pain—yes, I still refuse to pay for haircuts, still refuse the bagboy's help, still take one too manyfree samples, hoard stacks of thin brown napkins from the corner coffee shop. No, my hairwill never be even. I still find peace in my high school mantra: female Kurt Cobain. Yes, I'm oldand adolescent, still holding on to the time when our hair was the same shade of red,lurid and endless as the neon sign at the bar I wasn't allowed to touch. No, no new tattoos.Yes, I remember your confession, though I still don't know why, at sixteen, I needed to know of a kiss that meant nothing,but meant enough to keep it a secret. I remember your words exactly: A woman's secret can tilt the world.Yes, he treats me right, says he wants to keep me, as if I was a jewel, something precious, lost, histo be found. Yes, I'm happier now, yes, I know I'm losing time, yes, I'll find a job, eventually,but no, still no talk of children. [End Page 110] Animalia Everything bites.vievee francis You tell me it's all a matter of creation, the beliefthat all things come from something else,that our song is shaped from radiance, from pride. You tell mefacing it is the easy part. You hold the wishbone to this pairing. Tell me of your theory, that a clean kill is bestfor small prey, the kind that bleed with a sly grace,the intimacy of a dull blade, the meat hangingfrom my teeth. Clean, precise—as if to sayI know you. You know my reasons. You hold the flint that sparks our endgame,as if a fire could guide us back again, as ifthe path is the same trail, abandoned—still and patientwith desire. We watch the crowning mother push and breakin silence. If only the sound could shift, like pain. Expecting I said it wasn't a joke, as in, the worry had boiled over—some dark weight unable to push through the veil,some unforeseen settling. I spoke as if I knewthe answer, some forgotten prayer we learned [End Page 111] as children, before we knew ourselves. I feel like I am,but I'm not. He said he wouldn't know until it cameto be: violence or full collapse. He'd punch his fistinto his chest, bruise in celebration, some budding territorial seed.He'd ask about the timing, the when and why not. Or maybeI wouldn't tell him—bear this pink weight alone. Us, Retrograde For B-Juice I gave her my right slipper, told her to keep it, wear it home.I wrapped my foot in a Publix bag, went to sophomore physics, watched their faces turn vicious, their eyessliding to my toes. What the fuck is wrong with you? I thought of gravitational pulls, how much I'd weigh on the moon,thought of the multiverse, a second self. I wondered if she'd be there too, her blue sweater, turquoise with an aqua trim,how...

The effect of acoustical treatment on primary school children’s performance, sound perception, and influence assessment

A previous field study showed that more than 85% of Dutch children reported they were bothered by noise in the classroom. To investigate the impact of acoustical treatment on children’s phoneme identification, 335 school children (9 to 13 years old) from the previously studied schools were invited to take part in a series of tests in the acoustical chamber of the SenseLab. All the children performed two series of listening tests and evaluations in chamber A (untreated) and chamber B (acoustically treated) respectively, while at the same time one of seven background sounds (45dB or 60dB traffic noise, 45dB or 60dB children talking, 45dB or 60dB music, or no sound) were randomly played in the chambers. T-tests were conducted to compare the results of children’s phonological process tasks, sound perceptions, and influence assessments in these two chambers. Results showed a statistically significant difference in children’s sound perceptions (p=0.01). Children reported the untreated chamber A to be noisier.