Chapter 9 - Cognitive Development in Early Childhood Flashcards
Piaget’s Theory: The Preoperational Stage
2 – 7 years old
Most obvious change in the extordinary increases in representational or symbolic activity.
Piaget acknowledged that language is our most flexible means of mental representation. By detaching thought from action it permits far more efficient thinking. But Piaget did not regard language as the primary ingredient in early childhood cognitive change. Instead he believed it was advances in Mental Representation that allowed for internal images of experiences that children label as words.
Piaget tended to focus in limitations on thought, rather than abilities, during the preoperational period
Make believe play
An example of mental representation
Piaget believed that children practice and strengthen newly acquired representational schemes.
As young as two they understand play is a representational activity and this strengthens over early childhood.
Development of Make believe play
Mental representation is required
• Play detaches from the real-life conditions associated with it. – Toddlers only use realistic objects, imitates adult’s actions, and are not yet flexible. After age 2 children pretend with less realistic objects, increasing in flexibility until they can imagine objects and situations without support from the real world
• Play becomes less self centered. – at first make believe play is directed towards self. Later towards objects (doll).
• Play includes more complex combinations of schemes. -
Benefits of make believe
Piagets views are too limited.
Play not only reflects but contributes too cognitive and social skills.
Strengthens mental abilities like: sustained attention, memory, logic, reasoning, language, literacy, imagination, creativity, the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking, regulate one’s own emotions and behavior, and to take others perspective.
Imaginary companions
Imaginary friends
Human like qualities
Sociodramatic play
Make believe with others
Underway by end of second year and increases rapidly in complexity during early childhood
- Last longer, shows more involvement, and is more cooperative than other peer shared activities like drawing
- Children who do this more are seen as more socially competent
Enhancing make believe play in early childhood
- Provide space and materials for play
- Encourage but don’t control play
- Offer realistic and unclear objects for play
- Ensure many rich real world experiences to inspire positive make believe play
- Help children solve social conflicts constructively
Enhancing make believe play in early childhood
- Provide space and materials for play
- Encourage but don’t control play
- Offer realistic and unclear objects for play
- Ensure many rich real world experiences to inspire positive make believe play
- Help children solve social conflicts constructively
Dual representation
Viewing a symbol object as both and object in its own right and a symbol
- Exposure to divers symbols like books, pictures, drawings, make believe, and maps can help
Advances in Mental Representation
Mental representations allow us to
• Think about objects or events not present
• Think about abstract concepts
• Think about past or future
Limitations of Preoperational Thought
Piaget tended to focus in limitations on thought, rather than abilities, during the preoperational period
- Egocentrism
Animism
- Centration
- Irreversibility
- Problems with the Appearance-Reality Distinction
- Hierarchical classification
Egocentrism
Egocentrism is the failure to distinguish the symbolic viewpoints of others from one’s own
Most fundamental deficit of preoperational thinking.
Prevents them from accommodating.
Animism
The belief that an inanimate object has lifelike qualities such as thoughts, wishes, feelings and intentions.
Piaget thought that this was because of egocentrism
conservation
The idea that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same even when their outward appearance changes.
Errors are caused by
- centration
- The Perceptual appearance
- Ignoring dynamic transformation (poring of water)
- irreversibility
Centration
Focusing on one aspect of a situation, neglecting other important features
Irreversibility
The inability to mental go back through a series of steps in a problem and then reverse direction, returning to the starting point.
Problems with the Appearance-Reality Distinction
Distinguishing between two identities, a real one and an apparent one.
Appearance from reality
Understanding that the contents of mind represent rather than reproduce the contents of the world involves understanding that thoughts of a thing may have different characteristics than the thing itself.
From this it follows that no entity in the world has a unique representation in the mind — individuals may differ in their representations of objects or events in the world, and a single individual may possess multiple representations of particular objects or events, either simultaneously or in succession.
3-year-olds appear to lack the ability to maintain two or more representations of particular objects or events. This is revealed by responses to questions concerning whether the appearance and true nature of objects or events may diverge.
Cat or dog test
Hierarchical classification
Hierarchical classification is the organization of objects into classes and subclasses on the basis of similarities and differences Preoperational children tend to fail class inclusion tasks because they center on the overriding feature.
Follow-Up Research on Preoperational Thought
- Preschoolers can pass simplified versions of the 3-mountains task
- Preschoolers can alter their speech to listeners’ developmental level
- Animistic beliefs are seen most often in relation to objects that seem to move by themselves or have other life-like features
- Preschoolers do retain some fantastic beliefs but their beliefs are flexible and appropriate for example they are when things seem to violate physical laws and not social conventions and when something seems to have caused the event. Because they entertain the possibility that something they imagine might materialize they are more sensitive to scary movies and stories.
- Preoperational children can often pass conservation tasks if the task is simplified and/or the child receives training
- They can reason by analogy about physical changes
- Preoperational children show causal reasoning in some situations—they use if-then expressions as accurately as adults do
- Use illogical reasoning when grappling with unfamiliar topics, too much information, or contradictory facts they can not reconcile
- Although they have difficulty with class inclusion, preoperational children are skilled at categorization (by: common function, behavior, or natural kind) challenging that they categorize solely by appearance.
- Children often have difficulty with appearance-reality distinctions up until age 6 or 7
3-mountains task
Jean Piaget used the three mountains task to test whether children were egocentric. Egocentric children assume that other people will see the same view of the three mountains as they do. According to Piaget at age 7, thinking is no longer egocentric as the child can see more than their own point of view.
Preschoolers do retain some fantastic beliefs
Most believe in supernatural forces, and use ‘magic’ to explain events that they don’t have explanations for
Although they tend to figure out Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and magicians between 4 and 8, their understanding that imagination can’t create reality remains wobbly
conservation tasks
Number
Mass
Liquid
weight
causal reasoning
Causal reasoning is the ability to identify relationships between cause and the effect.
categorization
During the second and third years, they form basic, subordinate, and superordinate categories. (hierarchical)
Ability is partially do to interest and exposure to subject.
In sum early childhood categorization is: less complex, but the can classify hierarchically and on the basis of nonobvious properties and use logical, causal reasoning to identify the interrelated features that form the basis of a category and to classify new members.
Adult child conversations are a major source of categorical learning. (picture book reading)
Subordinate – husky (subcatgorys)
Basic - dog
Superordinate - animal
class inclusion
The understanding, more advanced than simple classification, that some classes or sets of objects are also sub-sets of a larger class. (E.g. there is a class of objects called dogs. There is also a class called animals. But all dogs are also animals, so the class of animals includes that of dogs)
Why do Children often have difficulty with appearance-reality distinctions up until age 6 or 7
It is not a hard time distinguishing appearance from reality rather it seems to be largely a verbal issue
In cases where they can pick the right answer from objects then they do better than when they need to name the object
It involves the attainment of duel representation
At first this understanding is fragile
Piaget and Early Childhood Education
Piaget’s theory has led to three educational principles that continue to have a major influence on childhood education
Offered strong theoretical justification for child-orientated approaches to classroom teaching.
• Discovery learning – children learn for themselves through spontaneous interactions with the environment. Teachers provide a rich variety of activities designed to promote learning.
• Sensitivity to children’s readiness to learn – teachers introduce activities that build on children’s current thinking and challenge incorrect ways of viewing the world but do not try to speed up development by imposing new skills before children indicate they are interested and ready.
• Acceptance of individual differences – different rates of the same stage development. Activities planned for individuals or small groups
Some cognitive attainments of early childhood
2-4 years
Dramatic gains in represential activity as reflected in the development of language, make-believe play, understating of dual representation, and categorization.
Takes perspective of others in simplified, familiar situation and everyday face to face communication
Distinguishes animate beings from inanimate objects; denies that magic can alter everyday experiences
Grasps conservation, notices transformation, reverses thinking, and understands many cause-and-effect relationships in familiar contexts
Categorizes objects on the basis of common function, behavior, and natural kind. Devises ideas about underlining characteristics that category members share and uses inner causal features to categorize objects varying widely in external appearance.
Sorts familiar objects into hierarchically organized categories
Distinguishes appearance with reality.
4-7 years
Becomes increasingly aware that make believe play (and other thought processes) are representational activities
Replaces magical beliefs about fairies, exedra and events that violate expectations with plausible explanations
Solves verbal appearance-reality problems, signifying a more secure understanding
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
Whereas Piaget was sometimes criticized for focusing on children’s interaction with the physical environment, to the exclusion of the social environment, Vygotsky focused on development in a social context
Piaget de-emphasis on language as a source of cognitive development brought on another challenge from Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory.
In Vygotsky’s view the child and social environment collaborate to mold cognition in culturally adaptive ways.
During early childhood, rapid growth of language broadens preschoolers participation in social dialogues with more knolagable individuals who encourage them to master culturaly important tasks.
Private speech
Vygotsky
Greatly enhances the complexity of their thinking
Brighter preschoolers use more private speech than do those who are less bright
Children use private speech more often when engaged in tasks that are within their zone of proximal development, but challenging
More attentive and better task performance at a task then children that did not use it
Children with learning and behaviour problems engage in private speech longer than do their peers
This helps them control their own behavior.
Self guidance
Eventually becomes internalized as silent “inner speech”
egocentric speech
Piaget
Self speech that is directed to them self because of egocentrism. “talk for self”
Precursor to social speech
Now called private speech and uses Vygotsky’s ideas
Social interaction needs what two features in order to promote cognitive development?
Effective social interaction
(Vygotsky)
Intersubjectivity – the process by which two participants who begin a task with different understandings arrive at a shared understanding.
Between 3 and 5 children strive for intersubjectivity in dialogues with peers, as when they affirm a playmates message, add new ideas, and make contributions to ongoing play to sustain it. It this way they create a zone of proximal development for one another.
Scaffolding – adjusting the support offered during a teaching session to fit the child’s current level performance. (direct teaching activitys)
Guided participation
Effective social interaction
Vygotsky
Guided participation is shared endeavors between more expert and less expert participants, regardless of the precise features of communication.
More diverce opportunities to learn. (indirect teaching)
Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education
Both Piagetian and Vygotskian classrooms emphasize active participation and acceptance of individual differences but a Vygotskian classroom goes beyond independent discovery to promote assisted discovery.
Vygotsky’s theory suggests that classrooms should involve
Assisted discovery
Peer collaboration
Make-believe play – learn to follow internal ideas and social rules rather than their immediate impulses.
assisted discovery
Teachers guide learning with explanations, demonstrations, and verbal prompts, tailoring their intervention to each child’s zone of proximal development.
It is aided by peer collaboration
Evaluation of Vygotsky’s Theory
Vygotsky’s theory focuses on the important role of teaching and social learning
There is, however, a lot of variation in how this really takes place
• In Western cultures, parents take much responsibility for teaching children during interactions
• In some cultures, children are expected to learn through observation and participation in community activities
Vygotsky has also been criticized for largely ignoring the importance of basic motor, perceptual, attention, memory, and problem-solving skills
Information Processing
Recall that information processing theories tend to
• Focus on continuity in development
• Focus on the components that make up an ability
• Focus on mental strategies as a vehicle for change
Attention
IP
Becomes easier in childhood due to language skills
Recognition and recall
- 4-5 years - great at recognition
- 4 years - can recall 3 to 4 items
- Better recall is associated with better language development
- Show beginnings of memory strategies
- They don’t use memory strategies often because it taxes their working memory
Memory for experiences
- Episodic memory
- Between 3-6 years improve sharply for memory for relations among stimuli.
- The capacity to bind together stimuli when encoding or retrieving supports the development of an increasingly rich event memory
- Scripts – general descriptions of what occurs and when it occurs in a particular situation
- Scripts begin as a structure of main acts. Lacking in detail but usually recalled in the right sequence with age scripts become more spontaneous and elaborate
- They act out scripts in make believe play
- Scripts support planning
- Autobiographical memory – onetime events
- as 3-6 year olds cognitive and conversational skills improve their description of special events become better organized in time, more detailed. More personal perspective, and related to the bigger picture of their lives
- adults have 2 styles to elicit children’s autobiographical memory:
- elaborative style (follow child’s lead, ask varied questions, add information, volunteer own recollection – this helps re-establish and reorganize their memory)
- repetitive style (provide little information and keep to repeating the same questions regardless of child’s interest)
- Children who experience elaborative style recall more and produce more organized and detailed personal stories. Enhances richness of event memories
- as children convers with adults about the past the improve their autobiographical memory, crate shared history that strengthens close relationships and self-understanding.
- Girls produce more organized and detailed narratives about the past
Memory strategies
Memory strategies - Deliberate mental activities that improve our chances of remembering
- Rehearsal
- organization
Tools of the mind
A preschool curriculum inspired by Vygotsky’s theory – scaffolding of attention skills is woven in to virtually all classroom activities.
Overlapping-waves theory
IP
the theory of problem solving that states that when given challenging problems, children try various strategies and gradually select those that are fastest and most accurate
gradually at discontinuous stages
two criteria
- accuracy
- speed
Problem Solving
Use of less-efficient techniques can lead children to the discovery of more-efficient techniques
Correct solutions become more strongly associated with problems, and display the most efficient strategy.
Other times, trying to solve a complex problem using a less-sophisticated strategy may spark children to find a better strategy
Many factors including practice, reasoning, tasks with new challenges, and adult assistance contribute to improved problem solving.
Min strategy
Minimizes work
Theory of mind
Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from one’s own.
Understanding attention, understanding of others’ intentions, and imitative experience with other people are hallmarks of a theory of mind that may be observed early in the development of what later becomes a full-fledged theory.
Limitations: 3-4 year olds are unaware that people continue to think while they wait, look at pictures, listen to stories, or read books. (No obvious clues that they are thinking.
They also do not realize when two people view the same object their trains of thought will differ.
Children under 5 pay little attention to the process of thinking. They will say they have always known something they just learned, or that events must be observed to be know they do not understand mental inferences can be a source of knowledge.
Preschoolers view the mind as a passive container of information
They greatly underestimate the amount of mental activity the people engage in and are poor at inferring what people know or thinking about
Factors contributing to preschoolers theory of mind
Language and verbal reasoning
- prefrontal cortex crucial and the activation pattern usually appears when adults verbally reason about mental concepts.
- Understanding the mind require the ability to reflect on thoughts, which is greatly aided by language
Cognitive abilities
- The ability to inhibit inappropriate responses, think flexibly, and plan fosters mastery of false belief
Make believe play
- Offers rich context for thinking about the mind
- Extencive fantcy play or make belive companions show advanced falce belief understanding
Social interactions
- Sucurly attached
- Parents who talk to and describe their baby in terms of mental states
- Parent child nerratives and conversations
- Siblings
- Preschool
- Interacting with more mature members of society
metacognition
higher-order thinking that enables understanding, analysis, and control of one’s cognitive processes, especially when engaged in learning.
Which we use to interpret our own and other behavior and improve our performance on various tasks.
Awareness of mental life
At the end of the first year babies view people as intentional beings who can share and influence one another’s mental states. Milestone and predictor to later theory of mind.
At 2 they show clearer grasp of others emotons and desires, evident in their realization that people often differ and likes, wants, needs
They show vocab for words like think, remember and pretend
By 3 they relizes that thinking goes on inside their head and a person can think about things that are not present or being talked about
Between 3 and 4 they use words think and know to refer to their own and others thoughts and belifes
From 4-6 they realize that both beliefs and desires determine behavior. (false beliefs) it might be seen earlier in tests that do not require language.
Understanding false belifes become a powerfull tool for reflecting on the thoughts and emotions of oneself and others and a good predictior of social skills. It is also associated with early reading ablity.
Emergent literacy
Emergent literacy is young children’s active efforts to construct literacy knowledge through informal experiences
Preschoolers understand a great deal about written language long before they learn to read or write.
They often have some letter knowledge, an understanding that sounds relate to written words, and knowledge about what writing “looks like” before any real literacy training begins
Think a letter is a word
Do not distinguish between drawing and writing
Think that the symbol represents characteristics of the word (O for Sun)
Invented spellings between 5 and 7 when they find out that letters represent sounds.
Vocabulary and grammatical knowledge are influential
Adult-child narrative conversations enhance diverse language skills that are essential.
The more informal literacy experience the better their language.
Phonological awareness
The ability to reflect on and manipulate the sound structure of spoken language.
Phonological awareness often precedes other signs of emergent literacy, and is a good predictor of both emergent literacy and later reading and spelling achievement
Emergent literacy can be improved by
- Pointing out letter-sound correspondences to children
- Playing language-sound games
- Interactive reading
- Nursery rhymes
- Adult-supported writing activities
Building blocks
Early childhood math curriculum. Uses 3 types of media
- Computers
- Manipulatives
Early Literacy and Mathematical Development in Preschoolers from low-SES families
Preschoolers from low-SES families often
• Lack in opportunities to learn about language and literacy at home
• Are behind in emergent literacy skills, and later in reading achievement
Kindergarteners who start behind on early literacy tend to stay behind and that extends to other achievement areas, widening the disparities between economically advantaged and disadvantaged.
Giving low SES parents children’s books and guidance on how to stimulate emergent literacy.
As with literacy, informal mathematical training is often absent in low-SES children, so interventions (when done correctly) can be helpful
• Even something as simple as counting the number of steps taken getting from one room to another can help
• A few sessions playing a board game
Mathematical Development
The beginnings of mathematical knowledge also come early, without formal training
Between 14 and 16 months, we see beginnings of ordinality though only with very low numbers
By age 3, they can often count to 5, though they may not know what the number names mean
Most children grasp cardinality by about 3 ½ or 4
An understanding of cardinality increases the efficiency of counting
Counting, in turn, can be used to solve simple arithmetic problems by age 4
Children may go from counting on their fingers to counting from the first addend, to the min strategy
Understanding basic arithmetic makes possible the beginning of estimation (only just beyond their calculation competence)
Arithmetic knowledge emerges universally around the world but when adults provide occasions for counting , comparing quantities, and talking about number concepts children acquire sooner.
Ordinality
Ordinality is the relationships of order (more than and less than) between quantities
Between 14 and 16 months, we see beginnings of this, though only with very low numbers
Early in preschool children attach verbal labels (lots, little) to amounts and sizes
Cardinality
Cardinality is the principle stating that the last number in a counting sequence indicates the quantity of items in the set
Most children grasp this by about 3 ½ or 4
An understanding of cardinality increases the efficiency of counting
Mental Tests
In early childhood, tests of mental development no longer focus on perceptual and motor responses
Intelligence tests for preschoolers, and for older children and adults, sample a wide range of mental abilities
Tests for preschoolers tend to include both verbal and nonverbal tasks
Low SES: May react with anxiety also may not define the test in terms of achievement instead may look for attention and approval. – spend time playing with them before and encourage through out.
Tests for preschoolers
verbal and nonverbal tasks
Verbal may include
• Naming pictures to assess vocabulary
• Repeating sentences and sequences of numbers to test memory
• Simple addition and subtraction problems to test quantitative knowledge and problem solving
Nonverbal often tests spatial knowledge through
• Copying designs with special blocks
• Finding a pattern in a series of shapes
• Indicating what a piece of paper folded and cut would look like when unfolded
Studies using the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) with preschoolers find that preschoolers are more likely to develop well intellectually if they
Have homes rich in educational toys and books
Have parents who
• Are warm and affectionate
• Stimulate language and academic knowledge
• Arrange interesting outings
• Make reasonable demands for socially mature behaviour
• Resolve conflicts with reason instead of physical force and punishment
HOME scores
Predict reading achievement in middle childhood
May explain much of the correlation between SES and intelligence test scores and emergent literacy skills
Preschool, Kindergarten, and Child Care
Early childhood is a period when children are away from their homes and parents more than infants and toddlers are
We see more preschool and child-care centre use among children of higher-income parents, and of very low-income parents
• Those in between (especially low-income, without the “very”) often can’t afford preschools and don’t qualify for government subsidization
Even within the title of ‘preschool’ or of ‘child care’, there are different types
• Child-centred programs
• Academic programs
Preschool
Preschool - a program with planned educational experiences aimed at enhancing the development of 2- to 5-year-olds
Child care
Child care - includes a variety of arrangements for supervising children, ranging from care in the caregiver’s or the child’s home to some type of centre-based program
Substandard – lower cognitive and social skills, more behavior problems. Worse effects if center based rather than home based, or long periods of time, or instability of exposure of different child care settings.
Goo child care – enhances cognitive, language, and social development. Especially for low SES. Better effects if center based rather than home based.
Child-centred programs
Child-centred programs - preschools and kindergartens in which teachers provide activities from which children select, and most of the day is devoted to play
Academic programs
Academic programs - preschools and kindergartens in which teachers structure children’s learning, teaching academic skills through formal lessons, often using repetition and drill
Preschool and kindergarten teachers often feel pressured to take an academic approach, but there are problems with this
- Evidence that stressing formal academic training in early childhood undermines motivation and emotional well-being
- More stress behaviours, like wiggling and rocking
- Lower confidence
- Preference for less challenging tasks
- Less advanced motor, academic, language, and social skills
- Poorer study habits and lower achievement test scores through elementary school
Montessori education
Montessori education a type of child-centred approach that involves
• Multi-age classrooms
• Teaching materials specially designed to promote exploration and discovery
• Long time periods for individual and small-group learning in child-chosen activities
• Equal emphasis on academic and social development
The result?
• Better literacy and math skills
• More cognitive flexibility
• Better understanding of false belief
• Concern with fairness in solving conflicts with peers
• More playground time spent engaged in positive, joint play with classmates
Project head start
1960’s government program
Part of “war on poverty”
Effort to address learning problems before formal schooling begins
Provides: a year or two of preschool, nutritional and health services, parent involvement.
Benefits of preschool intervention
Higher IQ and achievement in elementary but declining after that School adjustment scores stayed higher then controls Were less likely to be placed in special ed or held back a grade Grader number graduated Increased employment Reduced teen pregnancy and delinquency More collage graduateds Higher income Married Own home Less criminal justice system Less drug use
Ingredients of high quality child care
Group size
Caregiver to child ratio
Caregivers educational preparation
Caregivers personal commitment to learning
Sesame Street, is associated with
Higher grades
Reading more books
Placing more value on achievement in high school
TV shows with slow-paced action and easy-to-follow narratives, such as Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and Barney and Friends is associated with more elaborate _____-________ _____ than programs that present quick, disconnected pieces of information
Shows with slow-paced action and easy-to-follow narratives, such as Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and Barney and Friends is associated with more elaborate make-believe play than programs that present quick, disconnected pieces of information
When we look at non-educational programming, watching more television is associated with
Less time spent reading
Less time spent interacting with others
Poorer academic skills
Computers as a form of educational media
- Young children can be introduced to programming skills using simplified computer languages that will allow them to make designs or build structures
- With adult support, computer programming promotes improved problem solving and metacognition
- Because it often takes multiple minds to solve computer issues, children more often work cooperatively than they do at many other tasks
Kindergartners who use computers to draw or write
- Produce more elaborate pictures and text
- Make fewer writing errors
- Edit their work much as older children do
Non-educational computer use
- As with non-educational television, non-educational computer games tend to involve violence and gender stereotypes
- So, as with television, the benefits and detriments of computers are dependent on the type of program or activity, rather than being inherent in the technology itself
Language Development
Early childhood is a time of great gains in language use
10000 words by age 6 – an average of 5 words a day
Vocabulary
fast-mapping
fast-mapping/ vocab
- Connect new words with concepts after only a brief encounter
Nouns first – later verbs which are harder because they are the relationship between objects – finally adverbs, and agictives which are modifiers that start general (big-small) then specific (tall-short, wide-narrow)
They assign a word a paliminary meaning and start using it right away, slowly refining it
The ability to acquire words quickly through fast-mapping may rest on several constraints that seem to exist…
• Mutual exclusivity bias
• whole object constraint
Constraints aren’t likely the only contributor, and not everyone agrees that they are important
One suggested explanation is syntactic bootstrapping
Invent new words and metaphors
A coalition of cues which shift in importance with age. (infants use perceptual cues, toddlers start using social cues, and pre-schoolers start using linguistic cues). Preschoolers do best when multiple types of cues are available.
Mutual exclusivity bias
a proposed principle of semantic development stating that children assume that an object can have only one name
- tend to use when the objects are perceptually distinct (shape)
- once they hear a new name for the object the set aside Mutual exclusivity bias
- cannot account for remarkable flexibility
whole object constraint
The whole object constraint refers to children’s assumption that a new word, applied to a new object, refers to the entire object
Syntactic bootstrapping
Syntactic bootstrapping - a proposed mechanism of semantic development in which children use syntactic cues to infer the meaning of words
The fast pace of language learning can lead to some errors…
Overextensions - an early language error in which children use labels they already know for things whose names they do not yet know
Underextensions - an early language error in which children fail to apply labels they know to things for which the labels are appropriate
How do children acquire the grammar that is necessary to put their vocabulary together?
Subject-verb-object word order starts piecemeal – limited to just a few verbs. By 3 ½ to 4 they can apply subject-verb-object word order broadly to newly acquired verbs.
Once they form 3 word sentences they can also make small changes it the words to express meaning. (plural, prepositions, tenses)
Complex structures – errors: asking questions, passive sentences,
Explaining grammatical development
One suggestion is semantic bootstrapping
Semantic bootstrapping - a proposed mechanism of grammatical development in which children use semantic cues to infer aspects of grammar
A Chomskian perspective (language acquisition) may be that children are born with an innate understanding of rules of grammar, and just need to learn the vocabulary of their given language
However, languages often differ significantly from one another in terms of grammatical rules
Operating principles
a hypothesized innate strategy for analyzing language input and discovering grammatical structure
Slobin suggests several important strategies that seem to exist across languages
• Pay attention to the order of words
• Avoid exceptions
• Pay attention to the ends of words
Overregularization
Overregularization - an early structural language error in which children apply inflectional rules to irregular forms
A child who used to say an irregular word correctly may appear to regress when s/he begins overregularlizing
Overregularization is more common when the irregular word is less familiar
Pragmatics
Pragmatics - the practical, social side of language, concerned with how to engage in effective and appropriate communication
Even at age 2, children know to take turns in talking, and can respond appropriately their partner’s remarks
Conversation
Over time, they learn to adjust their speech to fit the age, sex, and social status of their listeners
However, we do still see some egocentricity in early childhood, as children sometimes will gesture while on the phone, or refer to an early conversation that their partner was not part of. This tendency decreases between age 4 and 6
Supporting Language Learning in Early Childhood
Although parents don’t often respond explicitly to the grammatical correctness of a child’s speech, they do support language development
Overcorrecting discourages children from freely using language
Expansion - a repetition of speech in which errors are corrected and statements are elaborated
/
Recast - a response to speech that restates it using a different structure
Clarification question - a response that indicates that a listener did not understand the statement
