Class Meetings with a teacher and group of young children (ages 3-5) provide a forum for creative group problem solving, both establishing a community of learners and developing oral language skills. The construction of a child's oral language and problem-solving skills is far reaching and is an underlying theme in many areas of social and emotional growth including moral development, character development, conflict resolution, identification of values, self esteem, and academic improvement. The theoretical framework for this study is based on various scholarly sources including those concerned with early childhood group learning, oral language, and problem solving.During this 12 week action research study, both teacher-talk and children's problem solving strategies were addressed to answer the following research questions: What roles do teachers play in Class Meetings? What types of teacher talk are used to influence student thinking and talk within Class Meetings? What problems are identified in a Class Meeting with young children? What problem-solving strategies do young children develop within Class Meetings? The research design and methodology include videotaping, audio taping Class Meetings and transcribing these interactions with preschool children in an early childhood classroom setting.Results indicate that during this study, attendance at the Class Meetings increased, and that young children, when given the opportunity to self-select, chose to attend the Class Meetings over other available activities. Also, this study suggests that the Class Meeting model and effective teacher-talk support student oral language, the use of positive communication, problem identification, and the development of problem solving strategies. Implications for early childhood educators, teacher educators, policymakers and researchers are discussed.

Mitt syfte med detta examensarbete är att få en djupare förståelse om pedagogers tankar, erfarenheter och kunskap till att stödja tvåspråkiga barns språkutveckling. Genom intervjuer har jag kunnat ta del av hur pedagogerna enligt dem själva, anser hur de går tillväga för att stimulera språkutvecklingen i förskolan. Vilka möjligheter ges till barnen i förskolan för att främja det svenska språket hos tvåspråkiga barn. Resultatet visar att pedagogerna anser att barnens vistelse på förskolan är en språkstimulerande miljö där barnen dagligen tränar det svenska språket. Trygga barn har lättare att ta till sig ett nytt språk, därför ska pedagogerna arbeta väldigt nära barnen.   Pedagogerna arbetar aktivt med språkutveckling på många olika sätt. Pedagogerna menar att de själva bidrar genom att arbeta med konkreta material och tydliggör saker för barnen. Pedagogerna betonar även hur viktigt det är att samtala med barnen och kunna föra en dialog med dem, på detta sätt utvecklar barnet sitt språk. Att pedagogerna så ofta som möjligt sätter ord på det som händer och sker och även benämna och sätta ord på saker är också ett sätt som pedagoger gör i vardagliga situationer. Det är viktigt att pedagogerna finns där för att stötta och ge barnen ord och uttryck för saker som de inte har så att de kan förstå varandra i lekar och aktiviteter. / My purpose with this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of pedagogue’s thoughts, experiences and knowledge to support bilingual children's language development. Through interviews, I have been able to see how pedagogues as they themselves consider how they go about to stimulate language development in preschool. What opportunities are given to children in preschool to promote the Swedish language in bilingual children. The results show that pedagogues believe that children’s stay at preschool is a language stimulating environment where children daily practice in the Swedish language. Confident children are more likely to absorb a new language, why pedagogues should work very close to the children.   Pedagogues are actively working with language development in many different ways. Pedagogues believe that they themselves contribute by working with concrete materials and clarify things for the kids. Pedagogues also emphasized how important it is to converse with children and able to engage in dialogue with them, thus developing the child's language. To pedagogues as often as possible put into words what is happening and also the term and put words to things is also a way that teachers do in everyday situations. It is important that pedagogues are there to support and give children words and phrases for things that they have so they can understand each other in games and activities.

The aim of this study was to examine how the activities of two preschools develop the language in matter of the teacher’s work of procedure. The following research questions were essential for the survey and therefore formed the basis of the examination: How do the teachers in both preschools work in a language evolving way? What significance does the environment have for the language development? Are there similarities and differences between the preschools in their language development approach? The study is based on a qualitative method, where the teachers of both preschools were interviewed with the purpose of obtaining information. The teacher’s statements and interviews were analyzed in relation to previous research, where the theories of different writers form the base of the theoretical connection to the study. The teachers view in developing the language regarding to their aspirations in measuring the language an important position in their operation, can be portraied as the conclusions of this study. Both preschools share a common view that the linguistic development is of great importance and should for that reason be highlighted as well as emphasized in the teachers working methods. However, the teachers in both preschools differ in their view considering language development due to their different ideas of witch working methods best stimulate the students linguistic abilities to development. The preschools working methods can be seen from a positive point of view and also from a critical one in relation to the examination, where the teacher’s interviews were analyzed and discussed. Accordingly, the teachers in both preschools aspire to achieve the best results for language development.

The aim of this study was to investigate, illuminate and discuss teacher’s and multilingual student’s view on the connection between their mother tongue and their learning of other languages. This qualitative study is based on interviews with eight students in the 8th grade and two language-teachers from the same school, as well as ethnographic observations during English and Swedish lessons. With the help of some relevant theories, the empirical study is compared, analyzed and interpreted. The results show that the theories and informant’s view on the connection between the mother tongue and other languages are similar, which is that the mother tongue must be fully established before a new language can be taken in.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the lunchtime from a language development perspective. It will compare two preschools with different ways of organizing mealtimes and observe the conversations between teachers and children. It will also study the ways in which a meal is served and how it affects the conversations. In one of the preschools the children eat in a proper dining room where the food is served as a buffet while in the other preschool the children eat in the preschoolarea and the food is served in bowls on the tables. I also want to investigate how two of these preschool teachers reflect on the mealtimes as part of the language development plan. I propose the following questions: Do the preschool teachers think that there are opportunities for language development during mealtimes and as to what is their role in these conversations? Does the manner in which the food is served, whether as buffet or at the tables, affect the conversations between teachers and children? What are the preschool teachers reflection on this? What kind of conversations were observed in both preschools? This study is based on a qualitative method with interviews, observations and audio recordings of mealtime conversations. My theoretical approach to this study is the socio-cultural perspective on learning and development. The result shows that the preschool teachers felt that conversation during mealtimes was a good opportunity to stimulate childrens language development. They also considered their role as role models and conversation leaders and that they were central to how the conversations were steared. When comparing both preschools, it turns out that the way the meals are served affects the character of the conversations and that conversations during the buffet meal contain more breaks and less adult support.

This thesis is comprised of three manuscripts, each concerned with the narrative abilities of school-aged French-speaking children as assessed with the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI). The three studies involved the same three groups of participants: one group of 12 children with SLI between the ages of eight year three months and nine year nine months, 12 typically-developing children of the same age and 12 typically-developing children matched on language abilities. Each child completed narrative tasks, language abilities tasks and cognitive tasks during one experimental session at their home. / The first manuscript compares the ENNI narrative production (story grammar and referential expression) of school-aged French-speaking children to those of English-speaking children of the same age. It also provides data on the use of the ENNI with the school-aged French-speaking population with specific language impairment (SLI) by comparing their performance to the performance of their typically-developing (TD) peers. The second manuscript aims to identify which linguistic and cognitive skills contribute to narrative production of children with and without SLI at two levels: the micro- and the macro- levels. Finally, the third manuscript investigates the impact of variations in syntactic demand on the narratives produced by French-speaking children with SLI in comparison to the narratives produced by their age- and language- matched peers. The discussion summarizes the characteristics of French-speaking children's narrative production, the factors contributing to competency in narrative production, and explores the implications of these findings for language processing of children with and without SLI.

Despite considerable evidence in older populations that food intake can improve mental performance, little is known about the acute effects of feeding on cognition in the newborn period, a time when learning and memory are critical for discovering and adapting to everyday experiences. Feeding occurs well over 2500 times in the first year of life, raising the possibility that iterative effects on cognition may have cumulative effects over time. We recently demonstrated feeding enhancement of memory in two-to-three day old infants. Infants tested after a feed (versus before) displayed better memory for unfamiliar spoken words they previously habituated to and that were represented after a 100s delay. In this Doctoral Thesis, Studies 1 and 2 explore further the influence of feeding on short-term retention of spoken words. Memory was assessed using headturning and the Habituation-Recovery response. Study 1 extended the effect to older infants aged two-to-three weeks. Memory was enhanced after a feed over even longer delays, including 100s, 200s, 300s, 400s, and 500s. The overall gain in memory as measured by prefeed and postfeed differences at each delay was over two minutes long. Because newborn infants are more likely to hear recurrent words spoken by familiar voices, auditory experiences that they preferentially recognize, Study 2 looked at the separate effects of familiarity and feeding. Two day-old infants were assessed for either familiar speech-sound ("baby" spoken by the mother) or unfamiliar speech-sound from Study 1 ("beagle" spoken by a female stranger). The baby-mother sound stimulus was remembered better over a retention interval of 85 seconds than unfamiliar beagle-stranger, suggesting a strong influence of familiarity. To define the extent of the feeding effect, Study 3 examined sensorimotor processing of a reflex response. Three day-olds were assessed on habituation and retention of habituation of the glabella blink reflex over delays of 8s and l8s. No effect of feeding was found. Taken together, the implications of these findings are twofold. First, enhancement of memory for speech-sound by iterative feeding or recurrent exposure to familiar speech-sound stimuli may facilitate the acquisition of language. Second, feeding effects on cognition may depend on the nature of the task and previous experience with the stimulus. Further research is necessary for identifying what kinds of information and what processing abilities are more susceptible to the effects of feeding in early infancy.

No description available.

No description available.

Researchers have hypothesized that for people with autism, the deficits in learning certain tasks may be a function of deficits in learning the prerequisite auditory, visual and motor discriminations. The Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities (ABLA) Test is a useful tool by which these discriminations are assessed. This study investigated whether performance on ABLA Level 6, an auditory-visual discrimination, predicts performance on a receptive language task with children with autism. Participants included five children who passed ABLA Level 6, four children who passed ABLA Level 4 but failed ABLA Level 6, and one child who passed ABLA Level 3 but failed ABLA Level 4. Standardized prompting and reinforcement procedures were used to attempt to teach each participant to respond correctly on ten name-recognition tasks. During a task pictures of two objects were placed in randomly alternated left-right positions, and a child was required to point to the picture that was named. Training on a task continued until either a pass or a fail criterion was met, whichever came first. Three of the Level 4 participants passed all ten of the picture name recognition tasks, and one passed eight of the ten tasks. The Level 3 participant passed two of the ten tasks. All five of the Level 6 participants passed all picture name recognition tasks. The difference in performance between children at ABLA Level 4 and Level 6 was not significant at the .05 level. These results suggest that children with autism at ABLA Level 4 or 6 are approximately equally capable of learning receptive name recognition tasks.