Young Children Communicating
Over about a year and a half, Dr. Neelima Wagley and James R. Booth tested young children during two different time periods to get a better understanding of how our behaviours related to understanding and communicating through spoken language and certain regions of our brain influence one another. Before building a house on a hill, let’s set the foundation – traditionally thoughts of language development lean towards the arrangement of words and phrases (grammar/syntax) and the understanding of actual meaning of words (vocabulary/semantic) are learned independently from one another, however, some have suggested that the two are dependent on one another, and others say they simply complement one another.
Whatever the case may be, we’ve seen just how important a toddler’s vocabulary is when it comes to them learning proper grammar as the more words they know like “dog” and “give”, the more they’ll attempt to put them together when they want something! At such a young age they also learn how to understand the intended meaning of words through the context they’re placed in. Moving into the thicker stuff, neurons – cells that keep your functioning – work through electrical currents to communicate and create actions. Studies that measure voltage amounts, meaning neuronal activity, hint at the semantic section of the brain being active, before the grammatical portion, at around nine months old! Many regions of the brain play a role in language development, but the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) will be what’s applicable to us moving forward.
With some of the fascinating beginnings of language development from the ages of about one to three under our belt, we can try to understand Wagley and Booth’s findings in regard to those six to seven and a half year old school children. Scientists still don’t know very much about what happens to language systems when children enter into the more complex elementary school environment, so this is uncharted land!
Well…what did they find?
Preregistered analysis showed no favour of mechanisms relating to grammar or vocabulary. This supports and furthers the thought that the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary in young children have a closely tied relationship, extending into the ages of six to seven and a half. The interesting portion comes in with the results from the exploratory analysis showing grammar and vocabulary influencing one another with grammar mechanisms receiving more support. Utilizing this for everyday use, we can focus the education of elementary-aged children to shift towards comprehension of grammar while maintaining the focus on vocabulary in preschools. By better understanding how brains develop, society can be made to encourage natural processes and help everyone get closer to reaching their highest potential.
The internal focus was on the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG); pMTG implicated in semantic/vocabulary processing, IFG implicated in syntactic/grammar processing. Monitored via fMRI, both areas were activate equally during the preregistered analysis, however while both areas were active again during the exploratory analysis, the IFG received more support from the pMTG than IFG gave to it.
Post Based Off: Wagley, N., & Booth, J. R. (2021). Neuro-cognitive development of semantic and syntactic bootstrapping in 6- to 7.5-year-old children. NeuroImage, 241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118416
Image from: https://www.pbs.org/parents/thrive/helping-kids-communicate-with-one-another
