3. Language Development in Children

Question 1

Language Development: Receptive/Expressive Vocab

Answer 1

• 10-12 mos: understands up to 10 words
• 1-2 yrs: understands 200 words; produces 10-50 words
• 2-3 yrs: understands 2,400-3,600 words; produces 200-600 words (ave. 425 @ 3)
• 3-4 yrs: understands 4,200-5,600 words; produces 900-1000
• 4-5 yrs: understands 5,600- 9,600 words; produces 1,500-2,000 words
• 5-6 yrs: understands 13,000-15,000 words;
• 6-7 yrs: understands 20,000-26,000 words
• 6th grade: understands 50,000 words
• High school: understands 80,000 words

Question 2

Brown’s 14 Morphemes: Average Age of Acquisition/Mastery: Stage II (3)

Answer 2

• Present progressive -ing: 19-28 mos
• Prepositions in, on: 27-30 mos
• Regular plural inflection -s: 24-33 mos

Question 3

Brown’s 14 Morphemes: Average Age of Acquisition/Mastery: Stage III (3)

Answer 3

• Irregular past-tense verbs: 25-46 mos
• Possessive -s: 26-40 mos
• Uncontractible copula (e.g., here it is, there I am): 27-39 mos

Question 4

Brown’s 14 Morphemes: Average Age of Acquisition/Mastery: Stage IV (3)

Answer 4

• Articles: 28-46 mos
• Past-tense regular -ed: 26-48 mos
• Regular third person -s: 26-46 mos

Question 5

Brown’s 14 Morphemes: Average Age of Acquisition/Mastery: Stage V (4)

Answer 5

• Irregular third person (e.g., does, has): 28-50 mos
• Uncontractible auxiliary (e.g., she was working): 29-48 mos
• Contractible copula (e.g., he is nice or he’s nice): 29-49 mos
• Contractible auxiliary (e.g., Mom is coming or Mom’s coming): 30-50 mos

Question 6

Theories of Language Development: Behavioral Theory

Answer 6

• B.F. Skinner
• Explains acquisition of verbal behavior (not language); “form of social behavior”
• Does not describe language (meaning) as mental/cognitive
• Stimulus, Response, Reinforcement
• Learning, not innate mechanisms
• Environment and social interactions
• Verbal behavior is broken down into cause-effect (functional) units: mands, tacts, echoics, autoclitics, and intraverbals

Question 7

Behavioral Theory: Functional Units (5)

Answer 7

• Mands: demands, commands, and requests
• Tacts: physical objects/events stimulate speaking; describe/comment
• Echoics: imitative verbal responses
• Autoclitics: secondary verbal behaviors that comment/clarify the causes of primary verbal behaviors as tacts and mands; can include comments that explain why something is being said (e.g., I saw in the newspaper)
• Intraverbals: determined by speaker’s own prior verbal behaviors; what one says may be stimulus for more to be said; account for continuous, fluent speech

Question 8

Nativist Theory

“Transformational Generative Theory of Grammar”; “Minimalist Program”

Answer 8

• Chomsky
• Theory of syntax; Syntactic structures are the essence of language
• Born with LAD (language acquisition device) and contains universal grammar/rules of language; innate capacity to learn lang.
• Language not learned via environmental stimulation, reinforcement, or teaching
• Language competence= knowledge of the rules of universal grammar; is innate
• Language performance= actual production of language; imperfect b/c of factors such as fatigue and distraction
• Surface structure (actual arrangement of words in syntactic order; what is heard) and Deep structure (contains rules of sentence formation)
• Grammatical transformations: deleting, adding, substituting, and rearranging words to change meaning

Question 9

Cognitive Theory

“Cognitive Constructionism”

Answer 9

• Piaget
• Language acquisition is made possible by cognition and general intellectual processes
• Strong cognition hypothesis: cognitive precursors to language
• Nonlinguistic, cognitive precursors are innate but language is not; Language is neither innate (nativist view) nor learned (behaviorist view); They view language as emerging as a result of cognitive growth
• 4 Stages: Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete operations, Formal operations

Question 10

Cognitive Theory: Piaget’s 4 Stages of Cognitive Development

Answer 10

1. Sensorimotor (0-2 yrs): 6 substages
2. Preoperational (2-7 yrs): 2 substages: preconceptual and intuitive stage
3. Concrete Operations (7-11 yrs)
4. Formal Operations (11+ yrs)

Question 11

Information-Processing Theory

“Cognitive Connectionism”

Answer 11

• Cognitive FUNCTIONING, not cognitive structures or concepts; HOW language is learned
• Language learning relies on information-processing system, a mechanism which encodes stimuli from environment, operates on interpretations, stores results in memory, and permits retrieval of prev. stored info
• Steps involved in handling/processing incoming/outgoing info: organization, memory, transfer, attention, and discrimination (LT and ST memory=imp!)

Question 12

Information-Processing Theory: 2 Broad Categories of Info Processing (related to children’s language disorders)

Answer 12

Phonological processing: ability to mentally manipulate phonological aspects of language
(Temporal) Auditory processing: ability to perceive the brief acoustic events that comprise speech sounds and track changes

Question 13

Social-Interactionism Theory

Answer 13

• Vygotsky
• Language as a tool for social interaction
• Structure of language has arisen from language’s social-communicative function; Emphasize language function, not structure
• Language is possibly only b/c of social interactions (caregivers/environ=imp!)
• Verbal guidance and adult modeling; “Scaffolding”; Motivation=key!
• Cultural tools and social interactions around these tools play a role