Children become quite proficient speakers and comprehenders before they enter school, yet they are ...

Answer to q. 1

Although preschool children and young grade-schoolers show some awareness of the needs of listeners and make some adjustments in their speech (length or speed) to accommodate needs, they show deficits in adjusting the content of their communication to meet the listener's needs. For example, Krauss and Glucksberg found that Kindergarten and Grade 1 children failed to describe critical differences between stimuli to a partner. Young children often show deficits as listeners as well. Preschool and early grade-school children often fail to recognize when a message is ambiguous or has an inconsistency in it. They are also less likely than older children to request clarification of additional information when it is needed. By eight to 10 years of age, children show considerable gains both in their ability to produce informative messages and to be active listeners.

Answer to q. 2

C

Answer to q. 3

Deaf children learn to speak in the same way that hearing children do. As there seems to be a sensitive period for language development, this child, like other children, will require stimulation from his or her environment in order for language ability to develop to its fullest. These parents can expect to see the same course of language development in their child as they might expect in a hearing child. The child may begin to use gestures that mimic those that he or she is exposed to, for example, and soon those simple gestures will be combined in an unsophisticated manner that resembles the babbling of infants. Lastly, the child will begin to emit gestures that are accurate and correctly represent the stimuli of interest. This will be followed by the combining of gestures as a means of conveying a thought or sentence.

Answer to q. 4

B

Answer to q. 5

Parents of infants often believe their children understand the words they say to them, and early research on the matter seemed to confirm this. However, well-controlled studies more recently have separated out the degree to which infants are responding to the actual words their parents say and the nonverbal cues their parents are giving in communications. When parents are asked to communicate to their infants while they (the parents) are out of sight from the infant, 11-month-old infants do not generally seem to understand the objects to which their parents' voices refer. On the other hand, 13-month-old infants given the same task do seem to understand the words their parents are using.

Makes more sense now, TY