Lifespan Development. Tara L. Kuther

like a and the. However, their speech is more sophisticated than telegraphic speech because some pronouns, adjectives, and prepositions are included. Four- and 5-year-olds use four- to five-word sentences and can express declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences (Turnbull & Justice, 2016). Context influences the acquisition of syntax. Four-year-old children will use more complex sentences with multiple clauses, such as “I’m resting because I’m tired,” if their parents use such sentences (Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva, Cymerman, & Levine, 2002). Parental conversations and support for language learning are associated with faster and more correct language use (MacWhinney, 2015). Children often use run-on sentences, in which ideas and sentences are strung together.

      “See? I goed on the slide!” called out Leona. Overregularization errors such as Leona’s are very common in young children. They occur because young children are still learning exceptions to grammatical rules. Overregularization errors are grammatical mistakes that young children make because they are applying grammatical rules too stringently (Marcus, 2000). For example, to create a plural noun, the rule is to add s to the word. However, there are many exceptions to this rule. Overregularization is expressed when children refer to foots, gooses, tooths, and mouses, which illustrates that the child understands and is applying the rules. Adult speakers find this usage awkward, but it is actually a sign of the child’s increasing grammatical sophistication. And despite all of the common errors young children make, one study of 3-year-olds showed that nearly three quarters of their utterances were grammatically correct. The most common error was in making tenses (e.g., eat/eated, fall/falled) (Eisenberg, Guo, & Germezia, 2012). By the end of the preschool years, most children use grammar rules appropriately and confidently.

      Private Speech

      As Leroy played alone in the corner of the living room, he pretended to drive his toy car up a mountain and said to himself, “It’s a high mountain. Got to push it all the way up. Oh no! Out of gas. Now they will have to stay here.” Young children like Leroy often talk aloud to themselves, with no apparent intent to communicate with others. This self-talk, called private speech, accounts for 20% to 50% of the utterances of children ages 4 to 10 (Berk, 1986). Private speech serves developmental functions. It is thinking, personal speech that guides behavior (Vygotsky & Minick, 1987).

      Private speech plays a role in self-regulation, which refers to the ability to control one’s impulses and appropriately direct behavior; this increases during the preschool years (Berk & Garvin, 1984). Children use private speech to plan strategies, solve problems, and regulate themselves so that they can achieve goals. Children are more likely to use private speech while working on challenging tasks and attempting to solve problems, especially when they encounter obstacles or do not have adult supervision (Winsler, Fernyhough, & Montero, 2009). As children grow older, they use private speech more effectively to accomplish tasks. Children who use private speech during a challenging activity are more attentive and involved and show better performance than children who do not (Alarcón-Rubio, Sánchez-Medina, & Prieto-García, 2014). For example, in one study, 4- and 5-year-old children completed a complex multistep planning task over six sessions. Children who used on-task private speech showed dramatic improvements between consecutive sessions (Benigno, Byrd, McNamara, Berg, & Farrar, 2011).

      During elementary school, children’s private speech becomes a whisper or a silent moving of the lips (Manfra & Winsler, 2006). Private speech is the child’s thinking and eventually becomes internalized as inner speech, or word-based internal thought, a silent internal dialogue that individuals use every day to regulate and organize behavior (Al-Namlah, Meins, & Fernyhough, 2012).

      However, there is some evidence that private speech may not be as private as suggested. That is, private speech often occurs in the presence of others. When children ages 2½ to 5 years completed a challenging task in the presence of an experimenter who sat a few feet behind the child, not interacting, or alone, the children engaged in more private speech in the presence of a listener than they did when alone (McGonigle-Chalmers, Slater, & Smith, 2014). This suggests that private speech may have social value and may not be simply a tool for self-regulation.

      Although Vygotsky considered the use of private speech a universal developmental milestone, further research suggests that there are individual differences, with some children using private speech little or not at all (Berk, 1992). Preschool girls tend to use more mature forms of private speech than boys. The same is true of middle-income children as compared with low-income children (Berk, 1986). This pattern corresponds to the children’s relative abilities in language use. Talkative children use more private speech than do quiet children (McGonigle-Chalmers et al., 2014). Bright children tend to use private speech earlier, and children with learning disabilities tend to continue its use later in development (Berk, 1992). One of the educational implications of private speech is that parents and teachers must understand that talking to oneself or inaudible muttering is not misbehavior but, rather, indicates an effort to complete a difficult task or self-regulate behavior.

      Finally, young children’s transition from audible private speech to internalization accompanies advances in theory of mind, an awareness of how the mind works, and they are better able to consider other people’s perspectives, which helps them become more effective in communicating their ideas (de Villiers & de Villiers, 2014). Preschoolers who are aware of their own private speech are better at using language to communicate their needs, use more private speech, and display more understanding of deception than those who are less aware of their use of private speech (Manfra & Winsler, 2006).

      Thinking in Context 7.4

      1 How might advances in language development influence other domains of development, such as social or cognitive development?

      2 Given what we know about private speech, what advice do you give to parents and teachers?

      Moral Development in Early Childhood

      Young children’s cognitive capacities and skills in theory of mind influence moral reasoning, how they view and make judgments in their social world (Skitka, Bauman, & Mullen, 2016). Two-year-old children classify behavior as good or bad. They respond with distress when viewing or experiencing aggressive or potentially harmful actions (Kochanska, Casey, & Fukumoto, 1995). By age 3, children judge a child who knocks another child off a swing intentionally as worse than one who does so accidentally (Yuill & Perner, 1988). Four-year-old children can understand the difference between truth and lies (Bussey, 1992). By age 5, children are aware of many moral rules, such as those regarding lying and stealing. They also demonstrate conceptions of justice or fairness (e.g., “It’s my turn,” “Hers is bigger,” “It’s not fair!”). How do these capacities develop?

      There are many perspectives on moral development, as discussed in later chapters. Here we consider two classic views of moral development: social learning theory and cognitive-developmental theory. Both consider a young child’s moral values and behavior as first influenced by outside factors. With development, moral values become internalized and moral behavior becomes guided by inner standards.

      Social Learning Theory

      Social learning theory views all behavior, including moral behavior, as acquired through reinforcement and modeling (Bandura, 1977; Grusec, 1992). Bandura and McDonald (1963) demonstrated that the moral judgments of young children could be modified through a training procedure involving social reinforcement and modeling. Parents and others naturally dole out reinforcement and punishment that shapes the child’s behavior. Modeling also plays a role in children’s moral development. Adults and other children serve as models for the child, demonstrating appropriate (and sometimes not!) actions and verbalizations. When children observe a model touching a forbidden toy, they are more likely to touch the toy. Some research suggests that children who observe a model resisting temptation are less likely to do so themselves (Rosenkoetter, 1973). However, models are more effective at encouraging rather than inhibiting behavior that violates a rule or expectation. Children are more likely to follow a model’s