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The Relationship Between Social Skills andLanguage Acquisition in West VirginiaStephanie Angel Childers

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Recommended CitationChilders, Stephanie Angel, "The Relationship Between Social Skills and Language Acquisition in West Virginia" (2001). Theses,Dissertations and Capstones. Paper 532.

The Relationship Between Social Skills and Language Acquisition in West Virginia

Thesis submitted to The Graduate College of

Marshall University

In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Masters of Arts Psychology

By

Stephanie Angel Childers

Marshall University

Huntington, West Virginia

December 2001

Running head: The Relationship Between Social Skills and Language Acquisition

The Relationship Between Social Skills and

Language Acquisition in West Virginia

Stephanie Angel Childers

Marshall University Graduate College

The Relationship

Table of Contents

ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................iiiTHE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL SKILLS AND...................................... 1

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN WEST VIRGINIA................................................... 1

METHODS ........................................................................................................................ 6 SUBJECTS......................................................................................................................... 6 INSTRUMENTATIONS ........................................................................................................ 6

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition ....................................................... 6 Carolina Curriculum for Preschoolers with Special Needs ....................................... 7

PROCEDURES ................................................................................................................... 8

RESULTS .......................................................................................................................... 8

DISCUSSION .................................................................................................................... 9

REFERENCES................................................................................................................ 10

APPENDIX...................................................................................................................... 14

FIGURE APPENDIX ..................................................................................................... 15

The Relationship

Abstract

The interaction between social skills and language acquisition has been a topic of

interest in recent years. Current research has suggested children with social deficits are at

increased risk for language problems, and vice versa (Gallegher, 1999). As part of the

West Virginia Educare initiative, children ages two and a half to five years were

randomly selected and individually evaluated using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary

Test-Third Edition and the Carolina Curriculum for Preschoolers with Special Needs to

assess language comprehension and social skills. A Pearson Product Moment correlation

on 42 study participants yielded a correlation of -.083 with a significance level of .603

(two-tailed). The hypothesis of a significant positive correlation for the present study

was therefore rejected.

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The Relationship

The Relationship Between Social Skills and

Language Acquisition in West Virginia

During the preschool years, dramatic changes occur in the thought and behavior

of children. A sense of self is born and the child takes the first steps toward self-reliance.

There are measurable changes in brain size and structure that affect all domains of

development. However, what children learn, how they learn, and how much they learn

depend on many factors. Among the most important factors are the child’s physical well-

being, and the child’s emotional and cognitive relationships with those who care for them

(Katz, 1991).

Childcare has become the norm for young children in the United States. In 1995,

59 percent of children who were five years or younger were in non-parental care

arrangements on a regular basis (Hofferth, Shauman, Henke, & West, 1998). Among

childcare researchers, the established view is that childcare quality contributes to

children’s developmental outcomes; higher quality care being associated with better

developmental outcomes, and poorer quality care being associated with poorer

developmental outcomes for children (Hofferth, Shauman, Henke, & West, 1998).

The number of childcare centers in West Virginia has increased dramatically in the past

few years. In 1997, there were 300 licensed centers serving 9,561 children, and in 1999,

there were 441 licensed childcare centers serving 13,301 children (West Virginia Kids

Count, 1999). Parents pay roughly 60 percent of the cost of childcare. With the poverty

level being over 30 percent, providing affordable, high quality childcare is needed to help

parents in the state of West Virginia.

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The West Virginia Educare initiative provides standards and funding in an effort

to ensure families of children, birth to kindergarten, can access services that are high

quality and affordable to help them prepare for school and lifelong learning. Six pilot

community collaboratives, including, Cabell/Wayne County, Monoghalia County, Roane

County, Upsher County, Webster County, and Summers County, have selected childcare

and early education programs in their communities to be pilot Educare sites. There are a

total of 41 pilot Educare programs in the six communities collaborative areas, serving

approximately 1,770 children from birth to kindergarten.

As part of the Educare initiative, many areas of development are researched and

measured. Two key areas for study are language and social skills. Both language and

social skills are required for a child’s healthy development as they prepare to enter into a

school setting.

Language is the main method humans use to communicate. One of the most

important functions of language is interpersonal emotional and behavioral regulation.

Children’s language comprehension and expression skills are critical to the

understanding, encoding, organization, and retrieval of rules that enable them to effect

appropriate levels of self-control and emotional regulation. Language skills facilitate

executive control and meta-cognitive processing by providing a means for self-reflection,

verbal mediation, response inhibition, and behavioral direction (Gallagher, 1999).

Among the major components of recent social cognitive models, several including

the processing of social cues, the framing of interpretive attributions, and social problem-

solving, affect identification and labeling; and the anticipation of social consequences are

heavily language loaded and language facilitated (Kusche, Cook, & Greenberg, 1993;

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Lochman & Dodge, 1994). Language is used to label emotions, to talk about them, to

share them with others, and to examine the relationship among actions, intentions,

feelings and consequences for oneself and others.

Around the age of two years, children begin to show symbolic capacities in play

and social behavior (Nuttal, Kalensnik, & Romero, 1992). They have a spoken

vocabulary of about 200 to 300 words. By age four years, the average spoken vocabulary

is about 1600 words, and by age six years, the vocabulary expands to over 2,500 words.

Also, during the preschool years, a child discovers that he or she is a separate being from

other people.

Peer interaction may aid in the loss of egocentrism, necessary for the development

of conversational abilities. By age five, children begin to consider the point of view of

the addressee (Ervin-Tripp & Gordon, 1986). Differences in the perspective of other

speakers may be fundamental to later discourse where there is less situational support

such as reading.

Studies show that particular kinds of conversational or discourse activities, such

as role play, narration, cooperative action, and argument become sites for using

vocabulary and complex language structures (Ervin-Tripp, 1991). Play, for example,

gives opportunities for children to learn language from each other and to practice what

they learned elsewhere. Also, the social skills involved in carrying on an argument,

helping other children resolve disputes so play can continue, nurturing each other, and

persuading other children to collaborate involves strategic development of language

(Corsaro, 1985).

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Young children’s play with objects can include talk about the objects they are

playing with. The conjunction of the typical activity with an object, and talking about the

activity, helps the child match the words with the meaning (Ervin-Tripp, 1991). There

must be that kind of redundancy or predictability for language to be learned. Children

who are engaged in joint action by imitating each other’s actions, and then talking about

the actions, can learn language because the meaning of the talk is obvious and

understandable.

Acquiring positive interaction skills is a primary developmental task during early

childhood years (Strain, Guralnick, & Walker, 1986). These skills enable children to

form positive relations and friendships with their peers (Asher & Taylor, 1981), as well

as, acquiring language and vocabulary (Guralnick, 1981). Conversely, the absence of

positive interaction skills predicts peer rejection and ridicule (Strain, Kerr, & Ragland,

1981), school underachievement (Foster & Ritchey, 1979), juvenile delinquency (Roff,

Sells, & Golden, 1972), and adjustment and mental health problems during the adult

years (Roff, 1961).

Current research suggests children who have emotional and behavioral problems

are at increased risk for language problems. Conversely, children with language

problems are at increased risk for emotional and behavioral problems (Gallegher, 1999).

There is growing research that indicates that there is a substantial overlap among these

populations of children.

Studies of children being treated for behavioral and emotional problems have

reported moderate to severe language problems in 62-95 percent of the children tested

(Cohen, Davine, Horodezsky, Lipsett, & Isaacson, 1993; Cohen, Davine, & Meloche-

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Kelly, 1989: Baker & Cantwell, 1987a; Camarata, Hughes, & Ruhl, 1988; Kotspoulos &

Boodsingh, 1987; Love & Thompson, 1988). The language problems noted have

included vocabulary deficits, comprehension deficits, expressive deficits, and pragmatic

deficits.

Similarly, studies of children with language impairments have reported emotional

and behavioral problems in 50-75 percent of that population (Baker & Cantwell, 1987b;

Steven & Richman, 1978; Love & Thompson, 1988; Richman, Stevenson, & Graham,

1982; Beitchman, Nair, Clegg, Ferguson, & Patel, 1986). Emotional and behavioral

problems noted have included general immaturity, inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity,

frustration, aggression, conduct disorders, low self-esteem, low self-confidence, social

withdrawal, depression, and anxiety. Studies of problems and age have suggested that

externalizing problems, such as aggression, are more frequent at younger ages and

internalizing problems, such as low self-esteem, increase at older ages (Haynes &

Naidoo, 1991; Baker & Cantwell, 1987a; 1987b).

From these studies it can be concluded there is a positive relationship between

social skills and language acquisition. It is further hypothesized that a strong

development in social skills leads to strong development in language skills, as well as, a

strong development in language skills leads to strong development in social skills.

Conversely, a poor development in social skills leads to poor development in language

skills, as well as, a poor development in language skills leads to poor development in

social skills. Therefore, the research question to be addressed is how do social skills and

language acquisition correlate according to the data collected from the West Virginia

Educare initiative.

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Methods

Subjects

The sample consisted of N=42 preschool children, ages two and a half to five

years, who were randomly selected from the six collaborative communities. The sample

included 24 males and 18 females.

Instrumentations

Subjects were assessed using the Bracken-R, the PPVT-III, the Carolina

Curriculum for Preschoolers with Special Needs, and the ECERS-R for the larger study.

The PPVT-III and the Carolina Curriculum for Preschoolers with Special Needs were

used for the current study.

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition (PPVT-III) is administered

to children aged two and a half through adults and measures receptive vocabulary by

asking children to listen to a word and to choose the matching picture from a group of

four. The PPVT-III provides an up-to-date, well-standardized, norm-referenced test of

standard receptive language and verbal comprehension applicable to a wide age range.

This latest version of the PPVT-III has many advantages over the first and revised

editions (Hodapp & Gerken, 1999). Like its predecessors, it is easy to administer and

score, but it now has a more representative standardization sample, developmentally

appropriate national norms for ages two and a half to 90 plus years, new illustrations, and

updated content.

In a study of internal reliability (Clinical References, 1997), both forms of the

PPVT-III were administered twice to 226 randomly selected subjects in four age groups:

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2-6 through 5-11 (67 cases), 6-0 through 10-11 (70 cases), 12-0 through 17-11 (51 cases),

and 26-0 through 57-11 (38 cases). The interval between tests ranged from eight to 203

days, with 42 days being the mean interval. To reduce practice effects, examiners did not

inform examinees at the time of the first testing that they would be tested again. The

examiner who had administered the PPVT-III the first time did almost all the retesting.

The excellent internal reliabilities show a high degree of item uniformity within

either form of the PPVT-III. The high correlations between the two forms indicate

uniformity of measurement across the two forms. This study provides substantial

evidence for a high degree of consistency in the measurement of the PPVT-III scores

(Technical References, 1997).

Carolina Curriculum for Preschoolers with Special Needs

The Carolina Curriculum for Preschoolers with Special Needs (CCPSN) is

designed for children who have mild to severe special needs and who function in the two-

year to five-year developmental range. It can be used individually in either home- or

centered-based programs. It includes an assessment log and developmental progress

charts for children two to five years and for children from 12 months to three years. The

CCPSN assesses cognition, communication, social adaptation, fine motor, and gross

motor skills. Special needs options include vision, motor, and hearing.

The curriculum for preschoolers focuses on 25 specific domains of development,

providing a detailed picture of a child’s functioning. It is a “hands on” curriculum tool

that enables teachers to identify effective intervention techniques for use in the preschool

classroom and to plan individual preschool programs for children with special needs.

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The curriculum is high in authenticity and emphasizes many naturally occurring

tasks (Johnson-Martin, Attemeier, & Hacker, 1990). The importance of family

involvement is stressed, and activities are structured so that families can be involved

throughout the entire assessment and instruction process. The Carolina Curriculum for

Preschoolers with Special Needs is among the best technical data of any curriculum in

terms of reliability and validity (Johnson-Martin, Attemeier, & Hacker, 1990).

Procedures

During an approximated six-month testing period, randomly selected participants

in the West Virginia Educare pilot were evaluated using the Bracken-R, the PPVT-III,

The CCPSN, and the ECERS-R for the larger study. For current study, the summary of

results from the PPVT-III were used to assess vocabulary comprehension, with the results

then being compared to a summary variable created for the subsection of the CCPSN

called Interpersonal Skills, having a total of 21 items that assessed the social skills of the

study participants (See appendix). A correlation coefficient was then computed to

determine the strength and relationship between social skills and language acquisition.

Results

After entering the collected scores from the PPVT-III and subsection

Interpersonal Skills of the CCPSN, a Pearson Product Moment correlation (Figure 1)

showed with N = 42, r (10) = -.083, p.< .01. The significance level was .603 (two-tailed).

Graphs further emphasized a weak negative correlation that was not significant (Figure 2

& 3).

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Discussion

The results showed, unlike hypothesized, there was a weak negative correlation

between social skills and language acquisition of those participants measured in the

Educare initiative. The hypothesis of a significant positive correlation between the two

variables is therefore rejected.

It is concluded those participants with a strong development in social skills did

not tend to also have strong development in language skills. Conversely, those

participants with a strong development in language skills did not tend to also have a

strong development in social skills. It can be further said those participants with a weak

development in social skills did not tend to also have weak development in language

skills, and those participants with a weak development in language skills did not tend to

also have weak development in social skills.

There are factors that may have limited the results of the current study. First, the

beginning sample was much larger, but because of incomplete data on several CCPN

assessment logs and developmental charts, those results were deleted in order to run a

Pearson Product Moment correlation. Second, the PPVT-III was administered several

months before the CCPN due to delays in teacher training, thus, undo pressure may have

been exerted upon the teachers to quickly fill out the forms to meet the established

timeline. Also, children undergo dramatic developmental growth over six months during

the preschool years.

For future research it would be useful to train teachers to use the CCPN earlier

and more extensively before conducting assessments of children. The importance of

accuracy and completion of the CCPN assessment logs and developmental forms should

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be stressed to teachers to ensure validity and reliability of the measures. More research is

needed to address the relationship between social skills and language skills in preschool-

age children.

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Appendix

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Figure Appendix

15