The purpose of this study was to determine if the 'language listening' of children ages three years and three months (3.3) to three years and nine months (3.9) as measured by their behavioral response is influenced by the word-order of an interrogative sentence when presented in normal word-order, misplaced word-order, and scrambled word-order.'Language listening' for the purpose of this investigation was defined as the interpreted meaning of a young child as measured by the correct behavioral response to verbal stimuli ordered in specific syntactical variations. The verbal stimuli were written in three variations of word order. These patterns were normal word order which was the regular order of an interrogative sentence; misplaced word order was a pattern in which all parts of the verb and noun were interchanged in position; and scrambled sentence were positioned randomly without any set pattern of order.The subjects in this study were selected from the available population of children attending five nursery schools located in the metropolitan area of Muncie, Indiana. Selection of subjects and categorization into groups was based upon the index of the mean length of utterance of each individual member. This index was computed from a language sample containing one hundred utterances that were collected in the Screening Session.'Language listening' was measured by the relevant responses of subjects performance to specific requests to respond with an appropriate toy to the question asked and the directions given. Scripts used in the Data Collection Session combined a series of nine behavioral tasks with three of each of the types of word order--normal, misplaced, and scrambled.One major limitation of this study was the index used to measure the verbal maturity of the subjects in this study. This index is an average of the utterance used by the child and disguises the verbal expansion ability of the child and the sophistication of the child's verbal ability. Another limitation of this study was the selection of the behavioral tasks. It was observed that the subjects' performance in some cases was made from an anticipated response rather than responding from actual understanding of the tasks. It appeared that the behavioral tasks were oversimplified to be used the subjects included in this study.A research design employing the use of a Latin Square was constructed to combine the behavioral tasks with the types of word order. An analysis of variance was used for the analysis of data. The F-ratio, derived from an analysis of variance, was used to test statistical significance of the null hypotheses. The .05 level of significance was designated as the standard of significance.The findings of this investigation revealed that there is no statistical significance between 'language listening' and the type of word order. It was also determined in this study that the type of word order does not differentially affect children with varying verbal maturity. The findings did agree with research in the area in regard to children with a nonfluent level of verbal maturity. Agreement was found to support the research that with children having a nonfluent level of verbal maturity, the type of word order that is used as verbal stimuli does not affect the meaning that they glean from the stimuli.Among the recommendations offered was that further research be conducted with children in the early stages of language listening. It was also recommended that further research be conducted using an index of verbal maturity that is descriptive of the actual verbal ability of the child.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/174823 |
| Date | January 1974 |
| Creators | Andrews, Ellen Jean |
| Contributors | Strain, Joe P. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | vi, 205 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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