Part 7 (2/2)
From Birth to Age 2--PRE-SPEAKING PERIOD.
Age 2 to Age 6--FORMATIVE-SETTING PERIOD Age 6 to Age 11--SPEECH-SETTING PERIOD Age 11 to Age 20--ADOLESCENT PERIOD
This chapter will deal only with the first period of the child's speech-development, beginning with birth and taking the child up to his second year. The speech disorders of the later periods will be taken up in the three following chapters.
THE PRE-SPEAKING PERIOD: This is the period between the time of birth and the age of 2, and takes the child up to the time of the first spoken word. This does not mean, of course, that no child speaks before the age of 2, for many children have made their first trials at speaking at as early an age as 15 months, and many begin to talk by the time they are a year and a half old. At the age of two, however, not only the precocious child but the child of slower-than-average development should be able to talk in at least brief, disjointed monosyllables.
Before taking up the possibility of a child exhibiting symptoms of defective speech with the first utterance, let us familiarize ourselves with the fundamentals underlying the production of the first spoken words.
The mother, who for months, perhaps, has been listening with eager interest and fond antic.i.p.ation for her child's first word to be spoken, has little comprehension of the vast amount of education and training which the infant has absorbed in order to perfect this first small utterance. Months have been spent in listening to others, in taking in sounds and recalling them, in impressing them upon the memory by constant repet.i.tion, until finally after a year and a half, or more, perhaps, the circuit is completed and the first word is put down as history.
a.s.sOCIATION OF IDEAS: It must be remembered that perfect co-ordination of speech is the result of many mental images, not of one. In saying the word ”salt,” for instance, you have a graphic mental picture of what salt looks like; a second picture of what the word sounds like; a ”motor-memory” picture of the successive muscle movements necessary to the formation of the word; another picture that recalls the taste of salt, and still another that recalls the movements of the hand necessary to write the word.
These pictures all hinging upon the word ”salt” were gradually acquired from the time you began to observe. You tasted salt. You saw it at the same time you tasted it. There you see was an a.s.sociation of two ideas.
Thereafter, when you saw salt, you not only recognized it by sight, but your brain recalled the taste of salt, without the necessity of your really tasting it. Or, on the other hand, if you had shut your eyes and someone had put salt on your tongue, the taste in that case would have recalled to your mind the graphic picture of the appearance of salt.
As you grew older and learned to speak, your vocal organs imitated the sound of the word ”salt” as you heard it expressed by others and thus you learned to speak that word. At that stage, your brain was capable of calling up three mental pictures--an auditory picture, or a picture of the sound of the word; a graphic or visual picture, or a picture of the appearance of salt and a third, which we have called a motor-memory picture, which represents the muscular movements necessary to speak the word. A little later on, after you had gone to school and learned to write, you added to these pictures a fourth, the movements of the hand necessary to write the word ”salt.”
At the sight of the mother, a child may, for instance, be heard to say the word ”Mom” while at the sight of the pet dog whose name is ”Dot,”
be heard to say ”Dot” in his childish way.
Here we have the first example in this child of the a.s.sociation of ideas. The child has heard, repeatedly, the word ”Mama” used in conjunction with the appearance of the smiling face of his mother. Thus has the child acquired the habit of a.s.sociating the word ”Mama” with that face--and the sight of the countenance after a time recalls the sound of the a.s.sociated word. Thus a visual image of the mother transmitted to the child through the medium of the eye, links up a train of thought that finally results in the child's attempt to say ”Mama.”
To take another example of the a.s.sociation of ideas or the co-ordination of mental images necessary to the production of speech, let us suppose, for instance, that the child has been in the habit of petting the dog and hearing him called by name ”Dot” at the same time.
Now, if the dog be placed out of the child's sight and yet in a position where the hand of the child can reach and pet him in a familiar way, this sense of touch, like the sense of sight, will set up a train of thought that results in the child making his childish attempt to speak the name of the dog ”Dot.”
In other words the excitation of any sensory organs sets up a series of sensory impulses which are transmitted along the sensory nerve fibres to the brain, where they are referred to the cerebellum or filing case, locating a set of a.s.sociated impulses which travel outward from the motor area of the brain and result in the actions, or series of actions, which are necessary to produce a word.
It will make the action of the brain clearer if the reader will remember the sensory nerve fibres as those carrying messages only TO the brain, while the motor nerve fibres carry messages only FROM the brain.
To make still clearer this a.s.sociation of ideas so necessary to the production of speech, suppose this same child hears the word ”Dot”
spoken in his presence. He will, in all probability, begin to repeat the word, and to search diligently for his pet dog. Thus it will be seen that in this case the sound of the dog's name has stirred up a train of mental images, one of these being a visual image of the dog himself, causing the child to look about in search for him.
HOW WE LEARN TO TALK: We learn to talk, therefore, purely by observation and imitation. Observation is here used in a broad sense and means not only SEEING but SENSING, such as sensing by smelling, touching or tasting. The child imitates the sounds he hears and if these sounds emanate from those afflicted with defective utterance, then it follows that the initial utterance of the child will be likewise defective.
SOURCE OF THE FIRST WORD: The first spoken word of the child usually finds its source in some name or word repeatedly spoken in the child's presence. It is not usual that this first word is marked by a defective utterance and if such should be the case, then it is safe to say that this faulty utterance can be traced back to the imitation of some member of the family, or some child who has been permitted to talk to the child in his pre-speaking period. There is little to be gained by tracing the first word back, for no very profound conclusion can safely be registered with such a basis, for no matter what the word be and no matter whether it be correctly or imperfectly enunciated, it is the result of imitation.
There may be two exceptions to this, however, one being the case of a child with a physical defect in the organs of speech and the other that of a child who has inherited from the parents a predisposition to stammer or stutter. These exceptions, however, are so rare as to hardly require consideration. In the first (that of a physical defect) it is hardly probable that an organic defect would manifest itself in the form of stuttering or stammering, but rather in some other form of defective utterance. In the case of the inherited predisposition to stutter or stammer, there is always the question which has contributed more largely to the defective utterance--the inherited predisposition or the a.s.sociation with others who speak in a faulty manner.
ADVICE TO PARENTS: It is very essential that from the very beginning of the period of the recording of suggestion, the child is shown the correct and customary utterance with the best method of its accomplishment. The child should not be subjected to constant repet.i.tions of phonetic defects, imperfect utterance or speech disorders of any sort. The child who hears none but perfect speech is not liable to speak imperfectly, or at least not so liable as the child who hears wrong methods of talking in use at all times, for this last cannot escape the effects of his environment.
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