child language

Question 1

name the 4 theories

Answer 1

behaviourism
nativism
social interaction
cognitivism

Question 2

Behaviourism (who)

Answer 2

B F Skinner

Question 3

Behaviourism (what is it)

Answer 3

children learn language by repetition and reinforcement - they imitate their parents

Question 4

conditioning

Answer 4

occurs through interaction with environment

- our responses to environment stimuli shape our actions

Question 5

Reinforcement

Answer 5

positive
- rewarding them with praise, cheering
- makes bond stronger by following with a pleasant reaction
negative
- saying no, or correcting them
- makes bond stronger by taking away the negative stimulus

Question 6

Repetition

Answer 6

if the action gains a favourable response, then that action is reinforced and will repeat it

Question 7

John B Watson

Answer 7

coined the term behaviourism in 1912

Question 8

problems with behaviourism

Answer 8

• children make mistakes with grammar that they cannot have heard from adults
• children resist correction - revoke and refute behaviourism
• parents tend not to correct grammatical mistakes but do correct factual errors
• all children seem to follow the same stages of language development

Question 9

nativism (who)

Answer 9

Noam Chomsky

Question 10

nativism (what)

Answer 10

• the ability to use language is innate for all humans
• brain is not a blank state
• we have a language acquisition device (LAD)
• children are pre- wired with universal grammar

Question 11

poverty of stimulus

Answer 11

nativism

a child is not exposed to carefully planned examples of language instead of a cacophory of sounds

Question 12

virtuous error

Answer 12

nativism
own internal logic
most common - past tenses

Question 13

WUG TEST

Answer 13

jean berko
- invited some fictional words
- able to test if they had actually learnt a rule
- 80-90% could correctly pluralize wug
children do more than simply copying language - they learn rules and then develop language independently - refutes and revokes behaviourism

Question 14

Eric lenneberg

Answer 14

nativism
language has a critical period
- around puberty

Question 15

criticism of nativism

Answer 15

underplaying the role of input

LAD- interrupts what is heard and derives rule from it

Question 16

Social interaction (who)

Answer 16

Jerome Bruner

Question 17

social interaction (what)

Answer 17

nature nurture debate

- there is an innate ability - but natural talent is assisted by carefully structured input from significant people

Question 18

LASS

Answer 18

language acquisition support system

• helps acquire language e.g. pronunciation
  e. g. tv, books, toys

Question 19

child directed speech

Answer 19

how a significant person adapts their speech in interaction with a child
e.g. high pitch, embedded in the here and now, shorter sentences, use of special words

Question 20

Cognitivism (who)

Answer 20

Piaget - interested in the childs understanding of concepts, such as size and volume
vygotsky- followed on from piagets work, developing theories about the importance of the wider social environment on a childs cognitive and language development

Question 21

differences between Piaget and vygostky

Answer 21

Piaget - child needs to develop indepentdently (4 stages)

vygotsky- cannot learn without social context (groups) (MKO)

Question 22

more knowledgable other

Answer 22

the significant person in a childs life which pushes them through the zone of proximal development

Question 23

zone of proximal development

Answer 23

how far a child can go on his/her own

Question 24

pianist cognitive theory (2 stages)

Answer 24

preoperational stage (complex abstract thought is still difficult)
concrete operational stage (awareness increased)

Question 25

object permanence

Answer 25

starts to develop between 4-7 months

understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be perceived

Question 26

mutual exclusivity assumption

Answer 26

that only one label can be applied to each object

Question 27

whole object assumption

Answer 27

there is one word for the entire object - not part or characteristics of the object
e.g. dog - bark, tail, legs, ears