Child Directed Speech Theorists (CLA)

Question 1

Clarke-Stewart (1973)

Answer 1

Found that children whose mothers talk have larger vocabularies.

Question 2

Katherine Nelson (1973)

Answer 2

Found that children at the holophrastic stage whose mothers corrected them on word choice and pronunciation actually advanced more slowly than whose with mothers who were generally accepting.

Question 3

Brown, Cazden and Bellugi (1969)

Answer 3

Found that parents often responded to the TRUTH value of what their baby is saying, rather than it’s grammatical correctness. For example, a parent is more likely to respond to ‘there doggie’ with ‘Yes, it’s a dog!’ Than ‘No, it’s There is a dog.’

Question 4

Berko and Brown (1960)

Answer 4

Brown spoke to a child who referred to a ‘fis’ meaning ‘fish’. Brown replied using ‘fis’ and the child corrected him again saying ‘fis’. Finally Brown reverted to ‘fish’ to which the child responded ‘Yes, fis’. This shows that babies do not hear themselves in the same way that they hear others and no amount of correction will change this.