{"pk":25960,"title":"Speech and Print: Two Different Communication Media and Implications for\nAcquiring Literacy Naturally","subtitle":null,"abstract":"The linguistic input a child receives in the first years of life is foundational for cognitive and language development.\nIn a corpus analysis, the vocabulary in picture books was richer and more extensive than that found in child-directed and\neven adult-directed speech. The grammar and complexity of these communication media, measured by reading grade level,\nindicated that picture books averaged two grades higher than child-directed speech and one grade higher than adult-directed\nspeech. These differences between written and spoken language can be more adequately described by formal versus informal\ngenres rather than their oral or written media. Given that the child will read words and grammar not experienced in speech,\nthese results question the feasibility of the popular view that a child’s reading task is simply to “decode” the written language\ninto spoken language. A framework of acquiring literacy informally before schooling begins is described and explained.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Member Abstracts","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/93s3012r","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Dominic","middle_name":"","last_name":"Massaro","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, Santa Cruz","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2015-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/25960/galley/15584/download/"}]}