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Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1977. / Bibliography: leaves 394-404. / Microfiche. / xvi, 404 leaves

A growing body of research indicates that competence in oral language is a critical factor in reading and language success. This study sought, by examining screening procedures in use,to determine the extent to which oral language competence is assessed when children begin school in British Columbia. Following the identification of the measures employed, the study attempted further to determine what oral language factors were assessed by these measures and what proportion of beginners were assessed, generally and specifically, in oral language proficiency. A questionnaire was devised for circulation to the seventy-seven school districts of the province. To avoid bias in favour of oral language, the questionnaire asked districts to identify the total range of measures and techniques employed to screen possible physical and learning disabilities. Replies were received from 82% of the districts, representative of 87% of the provincial enrolment of grade one pupils. Summaries were compiled of the proportions of beginners screened for possible physical and learning disabilities. The means by which the assessments were conducted were also reported. The most commonly used tests of mental ability, readiness and other abilities were analyzed in terms of the principal abilities which each measure. The survey showed that on the basis of tests of mental ability, receptive oral language ratings may be derived for approximately 7% of the reported population. A further 1% were assessed in terms of expressive oral language. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

The purpose of this project was to devise a method to teach preschool children to discriminate between the letters b and d quickly and with a minimum of errors. In the two pilot studies a simultaneous discrimination task was employed with one letter serving as S+ and one as S-. Children who did not reach criterion during a pretest matching-to-sample task involving the letters b and d served as Ss. During training trials the children were reinforced with candy after each correct response. In both studies control Ss received the final form of the letter stimuli throughout the training trials. For the progressive Ss in the first experiment, the circular part of the negative letter was initially absent and then was introduced gradually over trials. None of the progressive or control Ss acquired the b-d discrimination in this experiment. In the second study three-dimensional letters were used. For the progressive Ss the upright negative letter initially was set so that the circular part of the letter was perpendicular to the front of the body of the S, who was seated facing the letters. The circular part of the letter pointed toward the S. Then, over trials, the negative letter was rotated gradually around its vertical axis until the circular part of the letter was parallel to the body of the S. The circular part of the positive letter always was parallel to the front of the S. Thus in the final step of fading the circular parts of the positive and negative letters were parallel to the S and were facing in an opposite left-right direction. In the second study one of the eight control Ss and four of the seven progressive Ss reached criterion. The majority of the progressive Ss who reached criterion made a number of errors. It was suggested that one possible reason for the lack of the success of the pilot studies was that the fading of the S- letter was not done in a manner which was very "relevant" to the final left-right discrimination. In other words, the steps in the fading sequence did not, through a kind of successive approximations approach, ensure that the behaviour of the child would come gradually under the control of the directionality of the letters. In the principal experiment an attempt was made to devise a fading sequence which would be more "relevant" to the final left-right discrimination. This fading sequence was compared with a control procedure in which the final forms of the letters were used throughout the trials. Subjects who did not reach criterion on the baseline matching-to-sample trials with the letters b-d were assigned to the progressive or control groups. The progressive Ss first received a series of matching-to-sample trials involving arrows pointing either to the left or right. Those who reached criterion on the arrow stimuli received a fading program involving a gradual progression from arrows to final letter-forms. The Ss who did not reach criterion on the arrow series received matching trials involving simultaneously moving arrows. The arrows were moved vertically and then horizontally. The distance of the horizontal movement was reduced gradually until the arrows were stationary. The Ss then received the fading sequence from stationary arrows to final letter-forms. Eight of the nine progressive Ss reached criterion on the b-d discrimination. Seven of the progressive Ss who reached criterion responded correctly on more than 90 percent of the trials while the eighth S was correct on 77 percent of the trials. Only one of the nine control Ss reached criterion. All Ss reaching criterion on the b-d discrimination successfully transferred to a p-q discrimination. The results of these experiments indicate that many preschool children do not learn to discriminate between the reversed letters b and d under a differential reinforcement procedure. However, the majority of such children learn to make this discrimination with no or few errors when they receive a fading sequence which is "relevant" to the final discrimination. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Children of ages two, three and four years and adults (N=24 at each age level) were given a comprehension task which involved pointing to the picture, from an array of four pictures, that matched a verbally given sentence. There were two sets of sentences, one consisting of probable and improbable sentences, which could be both active and passive with the improbable sentences forming a hierarchy of improbability depending on the abstractness of the sentence objects. This set was designed to examine young children's understanding of subordinate and superordinate elements expressed as functional relations. The second set of sentences were reversible and non-reversible, probable and improbable, and active and passive. This set was designed to investigate interactions among the three factors of reversibility, probability and voice and, to determine whether young children were able to handle semantic change in sentences more or less easily than syntactic change. Both sets of sentences were employed in examining children's use of contextual information in the understanding of sentences. It was found that subjects (Ss) at all age levels were able to distinguish probable from improbable sentences, implying that children as young as two years are able to employ contextual information in the comprehension of sentences. It was also found that there was a greater difference in performance between probable and improbable sentences at the two most abstract levels of the improbability hierarchy indicating that the subject and object in these sentences are in separate subjective categories. This supports Anglin's (1970) position that children in the early stages of language acquisition have a large number of semantic elements, and as the child's semantic knowledge increases, these are combined into larger and more abstract categories. One interaction was found on both hierarchical and non-hierarchical sets of sentences, between a syntactic and a semantic factor, which indicated that in the case of probable sentences, active voice is easier than passive, and for active voice, probable sentences are easier than improbable. This suggests that the syntactic factor is only stronger or more difficult than the easier semantic element and the semantic factor is only stronger or more difficult than the easier syntactic element, indicating that these two factors are of much the same strength. Other findings regarding the syntactic factor of voice and the semantic factors of probability and reversibility, are extremely tentative, as they are based only on particular subgroups of sentences and often found only for males or females at particular age levels. The errors made were examined and it was found, generally, that children most often reversed the actor and object, and infrequently chose a sentence with a different verb or a sentence with a different verb and a different actor. It was also found that the performance of two-year-olds, both males and females, was particularly affected by whether the sentence had ‘boy' or 'girl’ as actor and as first noun in the sentence, such as occurs in passives. They performed well on sentences with 'boy' as actor and first-mentioned and poorly on those with 'girl’ as actor and first-mentioned. It was concluded that either a subtle design feature contributed to this finding or it indicates that two-year-olds actually are better able to handle the notion of 'boy' as actor than 'girl’. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

This thesis examines the theories of some recent affective* literary critics in the light of James Britton's theory of language and learning. Until recently, literary criticism generally has not been concerned with the relationship between the text and the reader; it has concerned itself either with the poem as a static verbal object, as in New Criticism, or with the writer-text relationship, as in biographical criticism. With the neglect of the text-reader relationship, the study of literature has also ignored a basic aesthetic principle -- that the relationship between a work of art and its percipient is a dynamic interaction where 'ordinary' experience cannot be separated from aesthetic experience. Chapter I delineates this principle proposed primarily by John Dewey, whose theory is complemented by those of R.G. Collingwood, Susanne Langer, and George Kelly. Chapter II identifies and examines the recent theories of seven literary critics who discuss the 'affective' relationship between the reader and the text -- Norman Holland, Standly Fish, Roland Barthes, Wolfgang Iser, Georges Poulet, Wayne Booth, and Walter Slatoff. Two ideas emerge which are related to the aesthetic principle espoused by John Dewey and others: 1) our aesthetic responses to literature are natural extensions of our mundane selves; and 2) literature as art is still a linguistic utterance, and as such is related to other ordinary kinds of language use. But these ideas are rudimentary and fragmented and there is a need for a more general theory to integrate them. James Britton's theory of language in Chapter III, contained mainly in his book Language and Learning, provides a structure which subsumes these fragmented ideas so that a perspective can be gained on this new criticism. Britton puts forth the view that literature is a manifestation of man's linguistic activity in what he calls the 'spectator role*. This theory integrates the critical ideas arising out of Chapter II and also places literature in a new perspective with other of man's spectator role activities, both linguistic (gossip, personal letter-writing) and non-linguistic (play, dream, fantasy, ritual). Britton points to the importance of spectator role activities in personal development. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This study explores children's ways of conceptualisation through what children draw and what they say about their drawings. Drawings taken from 40 children between the ages of 5-10 form the main data of the study. Ten basic categories are drawn from a careful analysis of the drawings. The study also includes what children say about their drawings. The talk about their own drawings forms the language component of the study. The talk is organised into eight basic language categories drawn from an analysis of the talking data. Piaget's theoretical understanding of children's cognitive development is used to frame the data. Lowenfeld's (1975) broad developmental stages of children's art was used to test for correlation with the sample's output. In addition, Sinclair's (1992) linking of children's first utterances with the form of children's most fundamental self-expressions in language, are annotated. Piaget's cognitive understanding of children's developmental thinking strategies are used to explain the strategies children use in their drawings. Indications are that the drawings do reflect a developmental process, but this needs to be borne out by further research. The study bears out Lowenfeld's (1975) contention that there are unique ways of applying the basic conceptualisations of spatial relations in children's drawings. The presence of first and second language speakers in the sample points to the possibility that second language users may resort to basic and fundamental language structures when they use a second language. This aspect too would need more specific further research. Finally, the categories found could form a tool to enlarge an understanding of the found trends with a larger sample. The objective of obtaining some understanding of how children's minds work in the way they solve and approach their drawing and talking tasks was achieved within the constraints of a relatively small sample of children.