DEFECTIVE SPEECH IN CHILDREN
(1) THE PRE-SPEAKING PERIOD
From the standpoint of speech development, the life of any person
between the time of birth and the age of twenty-one years, may be
divided into four periods as follows:
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 anticipation 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 repetition, until finally after a year and a half, or more,
perhaps, the circuit is completed and the first word is put down as
history.
ASSOCIATION 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 association 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 association 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 associating the word "Mama" with
that face--and the sight of the countenance after a time recalls the
sound of the associated 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 association 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 associated 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 association 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 association 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
repetitions 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.