child language Flashcards
name the 4 theories
behaviourism
nativism
social interaction
cognitivism
Behaviourism (who)
B F Skinner
Behaviourism (what is it)
children learn language by repetition and reinforcement - they imitate their parents
conditioning
occurs through interaction with environment
- our responses to environment stimuli shape our actions
Reinforcement
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
Repetition
if the action gains a favourable response, then that action is reinforced and will repeat it
John B Watson
coined the term behaviourism in 1912
problems with behaviourism
- 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
nativism (who)
Noam Chomsky
nativism (what)
- 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
poverty of stimulus
nativism
a child is not exposed to carefully planned examples of language instead of a cacophory of sounds
virtuous error
nativism
own internal logic
most common - past tenses
WUG TEST
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
Eric lenneberg
nativism
language has a critical period
- around puberty
criticism of nativism
underplaying the role of input
LAD- interrupts what is heard and derives rule from it
Social interaction (who)
Jerome Bruner
social interaction (what)
nature nurture debate
- there is an innate ability - but natural talent is assisted by carefully structured input from significant people
LASS
language acquisition support system
- helps acquire language e.g. pronunciation
e. g. tv, books, toys
child directed speech
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
Cognitivism (who)
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
differences between Piaget and vygostky
Piaget - child needs to develop indepentdently (4 stages)
vygotsky- cannot learn without social context (groups) (MKO)
more knowledgable other
the significant person in a childs life which pushes them through the zone of proximal development
zone of proximal development
how far a child can go on his/her own
pianist cognitive theory (2 stages)
preoperational stage (complex abstract thought is still difficult) concrete operational stage (awareness increased)
object permanence
starts to develop between 4-7 months
understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be perceived
mutual exclusivity assumption
that only one label can be applied to each object
whole object assumption
there is one word for the entire object - not part or characteristics of the object
e.g. dog - bark, tail, legs, ears
