child lang. theorists Flashcards
Skinner – Behaviourism theory (Imitation)
- Importance placed on the role of the caregiver
- Operant conditioning (positive / negative reinforcement)
- Explains features like accent and dialect
- Does not account for things that are not imitated, such as virtuous errors, pragmatic awareness of social convention
Chomsky – Innateness
- children are born w/ inborn ability to extract rules from the language around them (helps them to learn language quickly)
- has a LAD (language acquisition device) – takes in grammatical rules of lang. around them
- has universal grammar
- LAD explains: impressive speed in which children speak; fact that children from all cultures pass through similar stages of lang. development; existence of grammar features that are common to all languages
- underestimates significance of Skinner’s argument (imitation, interaction and reinforcement are important)
Bard and Sachs (1977) – Input —– building on Bruner
- are the most recent CLA theories
- stresses the role of interaction in the development of lang.
- depends on input made by parents and carers
Piaget (1977) – Cognitive
- focuses on mental abilities and skills
- children need to develop certain mental abilities before they can acquire particular aspects of lang.
- child is firstly egocentric at around 18 months they realise things have object permanence – so child can grasp ideas of past, present and future
- when child can arrange objects in decreasing size, child will use comparatives in their lang.
- children are active learners who use environment and social interactions to shape their lang.
4 stages of Piaget’s (1977) cognitive theory
- Sensorimotor ( up to 2yrs) : child experiences physical world through senses and begins classifying things – lexical choices will be more concrete than abstract. Object permanence appears
- Pre-operational ( 2-7yrs) : lang. and motor skills develop and become more competent – lang. is egocentric
- Concrete operational ( 7-11yrs) : children begin thinking logically about concrete events
- Formal operational: ( 11+ yrs ) : abstract reasoning skills develop
what does egocentric mean
- when child is unable to grasp concept that something can exist outside of their immediate surrounding
problems w/ Piaget (1977) cognitive theory
- doesn’t explain how some people w/ learning difficulties are linguistically fluent
- so cognitive and lang. development isn’t as closely connected as this approach suggests, as it has 4 development stages
difference between interpsychological and intrapsychological
interpsychological: child’s interaction with people
intrapsychological: child’s interaction within themselves (their mind)
Vygotsky (1978) – Social development theory
- social interaction plays a fundamental role in development of cognition
- child’s cultural development starts w/ interaction on social level
- child’s first utterances w/ peers or adults are for the purpose of communication, but, once mastered it becomes internalised and ‘inner speech.’
- in non-structured socio-dramatic the child takes ownership, but in structured socio-dramatic play occurs in an educational environment (means of developing a child’s lang. acquisition)
Aitchinson (1987) child’s acquisition of vocabulary
- labelling — first stage and it involves making the link between the sounds of particular words and the objects to which they refer
- packaging — understanding a words range of meaning
- network building — grasping the connections between words, understanding some words are opposites e.g big, small and deep, shallow
Halliday’s taxonomy description (1975)
- links to pragmatics, believes early language of a child has 7 functions
- instrumental: used to fulfil a need of get something e.g drink, food, comfort
- regulatory: to influence the behaviour of others, make requests, give orders (bossy)
- interactional: develop social relationships and ease process of interaction — relate to others and they use small talk
- personal: to express personal preferences, feelings and views and identity of the speaker
- heuristic: explore environment— frequently accompanies child’s play e.g. labelling and asking questions
- imaginative: to explore something creatively
- representational: to exchange info. (giving or receiving)
How does child directed speech support grammatical acquisition
- it uses simpler constructions
- frequent imperatives
- lots of repetition
- frequent questions
- personal names instead of pronouns
How does Piaget’s (cognitive) and Tomassello’s (Usage-based) theory relate to grammatical acquisition
Piaget: child’s cognitive ability needs to be present for their lang. to reflect this – so won’t be able to use comparatives until they understood size and scale
Tomasello: argues against lang. being a special instinct; instead ability is primarily social and relies on using the same cognitive processes as other forms of learning
Roger Brown (1973) – 5 grammar stages
- 15-30 months: no bound morphemes, word order is correct
- 28-36 months: bound morphemes start appearing, present progressive tense ( -ing suffix), regular -s appear
- 36-42 months: regular past tense w/ -ed suffix
- 42-53 months: compound sentences that are joined
Ursula Bellugi (1971) – pronoun acquisition
- child will use a name rather than pronoun e.g. Rachel go now vs I go now
- child will recognise that there’s a difference between subject and object pronouns, but won’t be able to apply it correctly e.g. me play toy
- child will correctly apply subject/ object pronouns e.g. you love me
