Family Talk: Sources of Support for the Development of Decontextualized Language Skills

Beyond Shared Book Reading: Dimensions of Home Literacy and Low-Income African American Preschoolers' Skills

“…Decontextualized, or disembedded, language skills reflect an ability to talk about ideas and nonpresent objects or events-for example, referring to past and future events, requesting or sharing information, and expressing ideas and opinions unrelated to the immediate physical context (Olson, 1977;. In the Home School Study of Language and Literacy Development, Snow and colleagues found a wide range in decontextualized language use across four activities: book reading, talking about a past event, mealtime conversation, and talking while playing with toys Beals, De Temple, and Dickinson, 1994;De Temple and Beals, 1991). They also noted that decontextualized language use was associated with the literacy environment in the home.…”

Distinguishing Between Casual Talk and Academic Talk Beginning in the Preschool Years: An Important Consideration for Speech-Language Pathologists

“…A decreasing reliance on the immediate physical (and to an extent the immediate social) context is frequently discussed as a feature of language use with preschoolers that is important to later school success, and this is often referred to as decontextualized language (e.g., De Temple & Beals, 1991;McKeown & Beck, 2003;Snow, 1983;Snow & Dickinson, 1991;Watson, 2001). Talk in CT is more often about the immediate physical context (perceptually present objects and events), and this is even more pronounced in talking with preschoolers.…”

The effects of early home literacy environments on fourth-grade literacy achievement: an international comparison

“…The quality and amount of talk between caregivers and young children has been found to have a significant effect on language use and literacy development (Beals, 2001;Beals et al, 1994;Collins and Michaels, 1980;Davidson and Snow, 1995;DeTemple and Beals, 1991;Dickinson and Tabors, 2001;Dunn and Dunn, 1981;Hart and Risley, 1995;Hoff and Naigles, 2002;Huttenlocher et al, 2002;Dickinson and Tabors, 2001;Weizman and Snow, 2001), and may be related to within-culture differences in language tradition (e.g., Collins and Micheals, 1980;Heath, 1982). For example, Weizman and Snow (2001) found that the number of words in adult talk in adult-child dyads was positively associated with child vocabulary production and that the most sophisticated levels of talk (in terms of the vocabulary used) occurred during shared book reading, which has also been found to be a significant predictor of reading performance (e.g., Hart and Risley, 1995;Sénéchal and LeFevre, 2002).…”