Yet the sounds of speech are fleeting, gone as fast as they are spoken. Spoken words are an auditory symbol, a sound that represents a concept like dog vs. “dog” that means that particular sound must mean one and not the other. There is nothing inherent to the sounds of “dad” vs. Spoken language is deeply abstract and symbolic. Children learn to do this by comparing and contrasting examples and non-examples of each group as they try to decipher what essential qualities make something a dog vs. They learn that dogs are animals, but not all animals are dogs. They learn that dads, teachers, and sisters are also types of people. They learn that moms are a type of people. Over time, through interaction and experience with words and others, children learn how things can be put in groups. Learning about words is a process of associating many ideas and characteristics with that concept. In a way, even common simple words (like mom and dog) are a category because they represent a general concept. After all, a baby is small, but compared to a puppy, it is big! A dog can be big, but compared to a house, it is small. They are also searching for these patterns to apply context, such as knowing when something is big vs. Their words show us how they are searching for patterns and commonalities to understand word meanings, such as when a 4-legged creature is a dog vs. The words children use reflect what they know about the words themselves. They might under-generalize, by focusing only on specific characteristics, such as only recognizing dogs if they are walking on a leash. They might overgeneralize, calling all animals with 4 legs dog or all women mom. Over time, their understanding grows from specific to more general as they try to figure out what all moms or all dogs have in common. Children first learn mom as their mom and dog as their dog or one particular dog. Part of that process is learning what groups the word might belong to.įor example, some common first words are mom and dog. Learning words and developing language is a process of learning what a word means and what it doesn’t. Learning wordsĬhildren learn the concept of categories as they learn new words. This article describes how children learn categories and how you can use Proloquo to teach them. Fortunately, Proloquo is explicitly designed to help children learn both words and categories. For example, they may know the word dog but not yet understand that a dog is an animal. However, many emergent AAC users do not yet understand the concept of categories. For example, common first words like dog and mom are sorted into categories (folders) like Animals and People. Proloquo has a robust vocabulary that sorts fringe words into categories.
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