Child Language Acquisition Flashcards
1
Q
Parentese
A
The name given to the “gentle sing-song voice” that parents adopt when talking to their babies.
2
Q
Examples of naming functions
A
Mummy, daddy, she, ball, milk ,dog, baby, this
3
Q
An example of an action function
A
Give, sit, stop, put, go
4
Q
Personal/social function
A
Hi, bye-bye, yes, no
5
Q
Examples of modifying function
A
Dirty, nice, more, all gone, up, down
6
Q
Mehler (1988)
A
French new born babies were able to distinguish French from other languages. Babies as young as 4 days old sucked harder on their dummies, a sign of increased interest, when listening to French rather than English or Italian.
7
Q
Vegetative stage
A
0-4 months. Crying, coughing, burping. Child expresses itself vocally through crying. Signals hunger, distress or pleasure. Instinctive noise not language.
8
Q
Cooing
A
4-7 months. Gurgling, laughter,consonant and vowel sounds, pitch and loudness. Child develops increasing control over vocal chords. “Ga-ga”
9
Q
Babbling
A
6-12 months. Sounds begin to resemble adult sounds more closely. Making more noise but the sounds don’t have any meaning. Exercises and experiments with articulators and babies are likely to blow bubbles and splutter.
10
Q
Protowords
A
Word-like vocalisations, not matching actual words but used consistently for the same meaning e.g. “mmmm” to mean “give me that” with accompanying gestures such as pointing, supporting, the verbal message.
‘Made up’ words that a child will use to represent a word they cannot pronounce e.g. ‘rayray’ for ‘raisin’
these are not true first words as they have no semantic content
11
Q
Bilabial
A
Sounds most common i.e. Using lips
12
Q
Reduplicated monosyllable
A
When common sounds are repeated e.g. “baba” and “mama”
13
Q
Articulators
A
Parts of the body that make sounds e.g. mouth and tongue
14
Q
Holophrastic stage
A
Usually between 12 and 18 months child conveys a whole sentence in one word. Deliberately conveying meanings through word choice.
Caregiver must interpret the child’s meaning, based on the word used and other non-verbal cues; the caregiver will often expand on a child’s utterance to model the accurate form and lend clarity to what the child has said.
15
Q
Phoneme
A
Smallest element of sounds in a language that can display contrast and hence change meaning or function of a word.
16
Q
Phonemic expansion
A
When the number of different phonemes produces in babbling increases.
17
Q
Phonemic contraction
A
9-10 months. Number of phonemes produced reduces to those found in the native language. The baby discards sounds not required.
18
Q
Reduplicated babbling
A
Where sounds are repeated e.g. mama
19
Q
Variegated babbling
A
Where the vowel sound changes e.g. dada to doda
20
Q
Deletion
A
Dropping final consonants e.g. “ta” for “tap”
21
Q
Unstressed syllable deletion
A
Unstressed syllables are often deleted e.g. “nana” instead of “banana”
22
Q
An example of a consonant cluster reduction
A
“Pider” instead of “spider”
23
Q
Substitution
A
Harder sounds are substituted for easier ones e.g. “r” becomes “w”
24
Q
Diminutives
A
A suffix which is added to a words to show affection or to indicate something is small e.g. Doggie
25
Addition
Adding an additional suffix to the end of the word to change the way in which the word is pronounced and interpreted i.e. doggie for dog
26
LAD (Language Acquisition Device)
As proposed by Chomsky, the idea that all humans are born with an innate language learning capacity
27
Tabula rasa
Latin for “blank slate” and the term used to describe the idea that children are born with underdeveloped, fresh brains
28
Universal grammar
Term coined by Chomsky - the notion that all human languages possess similar grammatical properties which the brain is hardwired to be able to decode
29
Virtuous errors
Grammatical errors that are understandable and logical through an incorrect assumption being made about grammar and rules
30
Child-directed speech
The academic term for the language used by adults/caregivers when addressing children
31
Vygotsky (play)
- Young children often used props as “pivets” to support their play but when older, use their imagination instead
- He observed children role play adult behaviour as part of exploring their environment
32
Catherine Garvey (1977)
- She considered the importance of play on language development, focusing particularly on pretend play which can help vocabulary growth
- Children play because it is enjoyable as well as it practises social interaction and negotiation skills (sociodramatic play)
- Starts at about 4 years old - using field specific lexis and following adult structures /behaviour patterns
33
Susan Ervin Tripp (1991)
- Importance of play to language development since children learn from each other and have to work in a way that does not occur in adult/child interactions
- She argued that imaginative play is critical for children to experiment with language in unfamiliar and different ways
34
Skinner (pragmatics)
Social interactions lead to advances in the child’s pragmatic understanding so to learn pragmatics a child must interact with adults
35
Chomsky
- Children have an innate ability to learn language and pragmatics
36
Piaget (in relation to Halliday and Dore’s models)
- Halliday and Dore’s models focus on the child’s use of language as a way to discover the world and so support Piaget’s ideas that children learn by discovery “doing”
37
Brown and Levinson
- Suggested two main aspects of face in communicative interactions
Positive: where the individual desires social approval and being included
Negative: where the individual asserts their need to be independent and make their own decisions
38
Yousef (1991)
- Group of children in Trinidad
- Children responded to different social situations by using different varieties of English
Janet (3 years, 9 months)
- Conversation with mother - 100% standard English
- Family helper (a Trinidadian English speaker) - decreasing amounts of SE
- Brother/same age children - decreasing amounts of SE
39
Bancroft (1996)
- Peek-a-boo helps children to learn
- Turn taking
- Response
- Common purpose and understand the sequence
- Pleasure
40
IRF structure - Sinclair and Coulthard (1975)
Initiation
Response
Feedback
41
Initiation (IRF)
Mother asks a child a question e.g. “What do we say to Granny?”
42
Response (IRF)
Child provides a response to the question e.g. “Thank you for the sweets Granny”
43
Feedback (IRF)
Mother praises child for giving an appropriate answer e.g. “well done John”
44
Halliday’s Taxonomy (1975)
Halliday stated that there are 7 pragmatic functions of speech:
- Instrumental
- Regulatory
- Interactional
- Personal
- Representational
- Imaginative
- Heuristic
45
Instrumental (H)
Language is used to fulfil a need e.g. ‘want milk’
46
Regulatory (H)
Language is used to influence the behaviour of others e.g. ‘pick up’
47
Interactional (H)
Language is used to develop and maintain social relationships e.g.’hello’
48
Personal (H)
Language is used to convey individual opinions, idea and personal identity e.g. ‘me like Charlie and Lola’
49
Representational (H)
Language is used to convey facts and information e.g. ‘it hot’
50
Imaginative (H)
Language is used to create an imaginary world maybe seen in play predominantly e.g. ‘me shopkeeper’
51
Heuristic (H)
Language used to learn about the environment e.g. ‘why?’
52
John Dore’s pragmatics language functions
- Labelling
- Repeating
- Answering
- Requesting action
- Calling
- Greeting
- Protesting
- Practising
53
Labelling (D)
Naming a person object or thing
54
Repeating (D)
Repeating an adult word or utterance
55
Answering (D)
Responding to an utterance of another speaker
56
Requesting action (D)
Asking for something to be done for them
57
Calling (D)
Getting attention by shouting
58
Greeting (D)
Greeting someone or something
59
Protesting
Objecting to requests from others
60
Practising (D)
Using language when no adult is present
61
Evaluation of Halliday and Dore’s models
- Both provide useful models for analysing utterance used by children
- Dore’s model is broader
- It is often hard to apply either model accurately without information on context
62
Rate of lexical acquisition (words used at each stage)
End of first year - child begins to speak
12 months - vocabulary of about 50 words
24 months - vocabulary of about 200 words
36 months - vocabulary of 2000 words
7 years - vocabulary of 4000 words
63
Understanding words without using them
At each stage, the number of words understood by the child is expected to be higher e.g. at 18 months children can understand 250 words
64
Katherine Nelson (1973) 4 categories for first words
- Naming (things or people)
- Describing/modifying things
- Actions/events
- Personal/social
65
What percentage of first words were proper or concrete nouns? (Katherine Nelson)
60%
66
Leslie Rescorla (2009)
- Studied 78 children from the age of 2 for 15 years
- Found that there was a link between later vocabulary development in toddlers and continued language issues as they got older
- ‘Overheard’ speech from TV or videos is no substitution for real human interaction
67
Egocentric speech
A phrase coined by Piaget to describe his observations of children talking when alone, seeing it as their way to classify their experiences and environment . This supports Dore’s ‘practising’ function
68
Lexical development
A child’s acquisition of words
69
Semantic development
A child’s acquisition of the meanings associated with words
70
Under-extension
A common semantic error made by children where a word is given a narrower meaning e.g. ‘cat’ is the family pet but not other cats
71
Over-extension
A word is given a broader meaning e.g. all women are called mummy
Eve Clark’s study found that children based overextensions on physical qualities and features such as taste, sound , movement, shape and texture
72
Categorical over-extension
The most common type of over-extension (60%)
The name for one member of a category is extended to all members of the category e.g. Apple used for all round fruits
73
Analogically over-extension
A word for one object is extended to one in a different category; usually on the basis that it has some physical or functional connection e.g. ball used for a round fruit
74
Mismatch statements
One word sentences that appear quite abstract; child makes a statement about one object in relation to another e.g. saying ‘duck’ when looking at an empty pond
75
Aitchison (1987)
- Three stages of children’s linguistic development
- Labelling, Packaging, Network building
- Looked at semantic connections between children’s lexical and semantic development
76
Labelling (Aitchison)
Linking words to the objects to which they refer
77
Packaging (Aitchison)
Exploring what labels can apply to. Over/under extension occurs in order to understand the range of a word’s meaning
78
Network building (Aitchison)
Making connections between words - understanding similarities and opposites in meanings
79
Piaget (linguistic development)
- Linked linguistic development with an understanding of the concepts surrounding the word’s meanings
- Children cannot be taught before they are ready
80
Eve Clark
- Common adjectives like ‘nice’ and ‘big’ are among children’s first words
- Spatial adjectives like ‘wide’, ‘narrow’, ‘thick’, and ‘thin are acquired later
81
What age do children officially start learning to read?
4
82
Bruner’s LASS
- Explains how adults can encourage a child’s speech by using books
- He saw a parent-child interaction with a book as being four phased:
1) Gaining attention - getting a baby to focus on a picture
2) Query - asking the baby what the focus in a picture is
3) Label - telling the baby what the object on the picture is
4) Feedback - responding to the baby’s utterance
83
‘Look and say’ or whole word approach
- Children are taught to recognise the shape of words
- Children are exposed to written texts with heavy pictorial support
- Usually involves flashcards with individual words written on them, with a related picture to help children link objects to the reference
84
Advantages of the whole word approach
- Older readers don’t depend solely on phonemic decoding, which can slow readers down as texts get longer
- This approach allows children to get used to using contextual and textual clues to assist their reading
85
Disadvantages of the whole word approach
- There is no real system to the learning process
- The child relies on adult support when they become stuck on a word
86
Phonics approach
- Children learn different sounds by different letters and letter blends and some rules of putting them together
- The emphasis is on developing phonological awareness, and on hearing, differentiating between and replicating sounds in spoken words
- Teaches children how to connect the sounds of spoken English with a letter or groups of letters
- Analytical and synthetic phonics
87
Advantages of the phonics approach
- Children learn to understand how written words are built and spelt
- It enables children to decipher new and unknown words
88
Disadvantages of the phonics approach
- Early written vocabulary may be limited to words with basic phoneme/grapheme correspondences
- English spelling system is extremely complex and full of irregularities
89
Brown (1973) 20-36 month olds
20-36 month olds exhibited the following sequence:
1) -ing
2) Plural -s
3) Possessive -s
4) ‘the’ ‘a’
5) Past tense -ed
6) Third person singular verb ending -s
7) Auxiliary ‘be’
90
Chomsky (overgeneralisations)
- Overgeneralisations are often used to support Chomsky’s view that children can produce language they have never heard an adult say e.g. using ‘goed’ instead of ‘went’ shows children have worked out a syntactical rule
91
David Crystal
- Adds another way of learning to say 'no' to Bellugi's stages
- This is a more pragmatic than grammatical method of expressing what you don't want to do as it does not use a negative at all
- When adults don't want to be in direct disagreement with their children they use 'maybe' to mean 'no'
- Children develop this skill too
92
Stage 1 of Bellugi's 3 stages of negation
The child uses 'no' or 'not at the beginning or end of a sentence e.g. no wear shoes
93
Stage 2 of Bellugi's 3 stages of negation
The child moves 'no'/'not' inside the sentence e.g. I no want it
94
Stage 3 of Bellugi's 3 stages of negation
The child attached the negative to auxiliary verbs as they've now been learnt e.g. I am not
95
Berko (1958)
- Proved overgeneralisations
- She gave children a picture of an imaginary creature called a 'wug' and asked them what more than one 'wug' would be called
- 3/4 of 4 and 5 year olds surveyed formed correctly the regular plural 'wugs'
- The grammatical plural 's' was clearly being applied
- The test used words that children will not have encountered before and so proves that children learn the rule and do not imitate
96
3 stages involved in asking questions
1) Two-word stage: questions rely on rising intonation only
2) Second year: question words acquired; first 'what' and 'where' and then 'why' and 'when'
3) Third year: begin to use auxiliary verbs and inversion e.g. 'Where daddy gone?' becomes 'Where has daddy gone?'
97
Bellugi's pronoun stages
1) Own name used e.g. 'Tom play'
2) Child recognises I/me pronouns and that these are used in different places within a sentence e.g. 'I play toy' and 'me do that'
3) Child uses them according to whether they are in the subject or object position within a sentence e.g. 'I play with the toy'
98
Stage 1 (Brown's 5 stages of language development)
- 15-30 months
- No bound morphemes
- MLU of 1.75
- Word order will generally be correct
99
Stage 2 (Brown's 5 stages of development)
- 28-36 months
- Bound morphemes start appearing
- Present progressive tense with -ing suffix
- Regular -s plurals begin to appear
- MLU of 2.25
100
Stage 3 ( Brown's 5 stages of language development)
- 36-40 months
- Possessives begin to appear (e.g. Daddy's car)
- MLU of 2.75
- Emergence of adjectives and adverbs
- Articles 'a' and 'the'
101
Stage 4 ( Brown's 5 stages of language development)
- 40-46 months
- Regular past tense with -ed suffix (we jumped)
- MLU of 3.5
102
Stage 5 ( Brown's 5 stages of language development)
- 42-53 months
- Compound sentences that are joined
- MLU of 4.0
103
Post-telegraphic stage
- When the remaining function words are acquired and used appropriately
The child can now:
- Combine clauses using co-ordinating conjunctions
- Manipulate verbs more accurately (e.g. 'the car was followed by the lorry')
- Construct longer noun phrases ( e.g. 'the two big red buses')
104
An example of morphological development
'run' to 'ran’ and 'running'
105
Piaget's cognitive theory
Piaget believed that children will only acquire more complex forms of language when intellectual development can cope
- Consider adding 'ing' to a word in contrast to using the correct form of the auxiliary verb 'to be'
- Trying to teach children before they are ready will fail because they are not ready to grasp the ideas involved
106
Holt and Willard (2000)
- The more knowledgeable other theory
- Children need a knowledgeable other in order to acquire acute language skills
- A child needs to see him/herself in people who they determine to be more knowledgeable
- Therefore this relationship is advantageous in acquiring language skills
107
Aims of child directed speech
- Attract and hold the baby’s attention
- Help the process of breaking down language into understandable chunks
- Make the conversation more predictable by referring to the here and now
108
Features of CDS (phonology)
- Separate phrases more distinctly (longer pauses)
- Speak more slowly
- Exaggerated singsong intonation
- Exaggerated difference between questions, statements and commands
- Higher and wider range of pitch
109
Features of CDS (lexis and semantics)
- Use of concrete nouns and dynamic verbs
- Adopt child’s own words for things
- Diminutive forms e.g. doggie
- Frequent use of child’s name and absence of pronouns e.g. Smile for mummy instead of smile for me
110
Features of CDS (grammar)
- Repeated sentence frames
- More simple constructions
- Fewer complex sentence and passives
- Omission of past tense and inflections
- More command, questions and tag questions
111
Expansions
Where the parent fills out the child’s utterance
112
Recastings
Where the child’s vocabulary is put into a new utterance
113
Recastings
Where the child’s vocabulary is put into a new utterance
114
Features of CDS (pragmatics)
- Lots of gesture and body language
- Stopping frequently for child to respond
- Supportive language
115
Clarke-Stewart (1973)
- Children whose mothers talk to them more have larger vocabularies
116
Nelson (1973)
Children whose mothers corrected them on word choice and pronunciation actually advanced more slowly than those which mothers who were generally accepting
117
Kuhl (1992)
- Studied exaggerated vowel sounds used by parents when speaking to 6 month olds (in English, Swedish and Russian)
- Babies turn towards adults who speak in a sing-song voice, ignoring regular conversation
- Mothers in all three countries exaggerated the important vowels
118
Evaluations of CDS
1. Recent research argues that CDS doesn’t directly help babies learn language, instead it helps parents communicate with children = its purpose is social rather than educational
2. Some non-western cultures don’t use CDS at all = it isn’t essential for language learning
3. A child’s language improves when in contact with an adult who speaks to them directly
119
Berko-Gleason (1975)
- Identified that fathers tended to use more commands and teased children a little more
- She also found that they referred the children to their mother, should any domestic need arise
- Mothers tended to use less complex constructions and were more sensitive and responsive to their children
120
Schieffelin (1975-1977) Ochs (1978-1979)
Schieffelin:
- Longitudinal study of CLA among the Kaleidoscope people of Papua New Guinea
Ochs:
- Longitudinal study of Samoan children’s language acquisition
They proposed that socialisation practices and ideologies impact language acquisition in concert with neurodevelopmental influences
121
Holophrase
A single word expressing a whole idea can act as a declarative, exclamation, interrogative or imperative
122
Noun bias
The number of nouns exceeds the number of other words classes in early vocabulary
123
Gestalt expression
Compressing a string of words into a single utterance as they have not been able to segment (e.g. ‘what’s that’ = ‘wassat’) It is also argued that these are constructions which the child is using as units of language
124
Segment
To be able to perceive the boundaries between words - this skill is gradually acquired
125
Syntactic inversion
Reversal of normal order of the words and phrases in a sentence, learnt when forming a question (e.g. ‘I can eat the cake’ (S;MAV;V;O) becomes ‘Can I eat the cake?’ (MAV;S;V;O))
126
Petitto and Holowka (2002)
They videoed infants and noted that most babbling came from the right side of the mouth which is controlled by the left side of the brain. This side of the brain is responsible for speech production; their findings suggest that babbling is a form of preliminary speech.
127
Desmond Morris (2008)
For the first 6 months of a baby’s life gurgles and babbles will be the same, regardless of the baby’s nationality or how much parental input the child has. Deaf children will also create the same sounds. By 6 months, the child will be increasingly attuned to variations in language being used around them and the babbling will start to resemble this more closely.
128
Bloom (2004)
The supposed noun bias merely reflects the frequency of nouns in our language; nouns outnumber verbs by 5:1 in dictionaries
129
John Braine (1963)
At the two-word stage, children use patterns of two word utterances that seem to evolve around certain key words. He called this a pivot schema - children use key words as a ‘pivot’ to generate utterances e.g. allgone: ‘allgone dinner’, ‘allgone milk’
130
Roger Brown (1973)
He identified the syntactic structures of two-word utterances and suggested that the combination of words placed together follow a limitied range of pattern
Examples:
Agent + Action e.g. Daddy go
Action + Object e.g. Make cake
Object + Location e.g. Teddy chair
Object + Attribute e.g. Coat soft
131
Steven Pinker (1994) Nativism
In ‘The Language Instinct’, Pinker suggests that rather than being a human invention, language is an innate human ability because:
- Deaf babies ‘babble’ with their hands and as others normally do with voice, and spontaneously invent sign languages with true grammar
- Even in the absence of active attempts by parents to correct children’s grammar, accurate speech develops
132
Nicaraguan sign language (1980s) Nativism
Deaf children in Nicaragua spontaneously collaborated to form their own sign language, suggesting an innate capacity to create a new language with quite sophisticated grammar systems
133
Oxana (1991) Nativism
An 8 year old who had lived with a pack of dogs, when she was found she could hardly speak and ran on all fours barking. Since being taught language; her speech is odd, without rhythm, inflection or tone. She speaks flatly, as though it’s an order, and can still communicate through barking
134
Lewis and Ramsay (2004) Cognitivism
They found that pronoun development within a child’s second year will depend on the extent to which the child has a sense of identity and can recognise the notion of self, particularly within the context of imaginary play
135
Repacholi and Gopnik (1997) Criticism of Piaget’s egocentricity
In an experiment involving food, broccoli and crackers were offered to infants aged between 14 and 18 months, who preferred the crackers. When offering a snack to the researcher;
- 14 month olds would offer the cracker, irrespective of whether the researcher expressed an interest for broccoli or crackers
- 18 month olds were able to identify the researcher had indicated a preference for broccoli and offered this
This suggests that from a very young age, children are sensitive to the needs and desires of others and are not entirely egocentric in their behaviour
136
Bard and Sachs (Jim)
Bard and Sachs studied a boy called ‘Jim’ who was the son of two deaf parents. Although he was exposed to TV and radio, his speech development was poor. It demonstrated that simple exposure to language (e.g. from television) is not an effective stimulus to language learning; human interaction is necessary to develop speech
137
John Macnamara
Stated that rather than having an in-built language device, children have an innate capacity to read meaning into social situations; it is this that makes them capable of understanding and learning language, not the LAD
138
Cognitive development
- The development of mental abilities and skills
- Language acquisition is inextricably linked to stages of cognitive development
- CLD can only be viewed within the context of a child's intellectual development
- Linguistic structures will only occur once the child establishes a cognitive understanding
139
Piaget's 4 stages of cognitive development
Sensori-motor stage
Preoperational stage
Concrete operations
Formal operations
140
Sensori-motor stage
The child obtains object permanence, or the ability to understand that an object still exists when it is not seen
141
Preoperational stage
Begins developing the use of symbols and language. If the child is able to respond to you with speech and engages in imagined pretend play, she is likely in the preoperational stage.
142
Concrete operations
Begins understanding concrete measures of conservations such as liquid, number, length, mass and weight
143
Formal operations
The ability to use symbols logically and develop abstract concepts
144
Bruner - LASS
This system includes all of the various strategies and techniques that adults use to assist children's language acquisition
145
Cole and Cole (1996)
Adult's speech to young children differs from their speech to adults, making it both more appealing and easier for the child to understand. They may also respond to the child's level of understanding by rephrasing both their and the child's speech in order to help the child become a more competent language user.
146
Child's active nature (Vygotsky)
The growth of understanding is accomplished while doing things with tools available to the child (e.g. cultural tools, such as language for play)
147
Pretence play (Vygotsky)
Using imaginary situations to reproduce real situations (e.g. the 'stick' for a horse) allows the child to engage with perceptions made (unconsciously) about character, roles etc.
148
Internalisation
Children's 'private speech'
Children listen to language and start to use it most noticeably as they speak to themselves as they are engaged in various activities. The process turns utterances into verbal thought, which is an aspect of our ability to function intelligently
149
Vygotsky - 4 stages
Primitive stage
Naive stage
External stage
Ingrowth stage
150
Primitive stage
Characterised by the infant experimenting with sound production. The lack of speech means no verbal thought is taking place - the baby is not lacking thought but rather a lack of relationship with her thoughts
151
Naive stage
As the child learns to speak, he/she speaks words without grasping their purpose and meaning. The child begins to contextualise meaning through more complex utterances
152
External stage
Using objects and cultural artefacts to signify meaning - toys, fingers, rhyming - all designed to help solidify his/her memory of objects and sounds. Talking alone as a form of experimentation is part of this stage
153
Ingrowth stage
When the child begins to internalise many of the tasks learnt through the previous stages inner speech/inner thought, called predication
154
Samoan families and CDS
Samoan families do not speak to the children until they are around 18 months old. This implies that language acquisition may be more innate.
155
Level 5 evaluation of nativism
Chomsky’s theory is often dismissed by critics because it is based on hypothetical thinking rather than real-life children. As such, leading linguistics like Tomasello have dismissed Chomsky as an ‘armchair linguist’. This criticism of Chomsky’s research throws into question the validity of his theory. As Pinker points out, nearly every utterance a child produces is a brand-new combination of words, and therefore questions whether a child can learn from imitation. Overall, Chomsky’s theory is limited due to not having scientific evidence, but is still very important in considering how a child learns language.
156
Exam tips that link to cognitivism
Children trying to make sense of something on their own.
Children not using certain language to express a concept which is complex/they are unlikely to understand.
157
Social constructivism
Tomasello’s theory states that children listen to language and do two things:
Intention reading – children learn how to use language to achieve social ends
Pattern finding – children look at many utterances and develop schemas based on patterns in language
158
Challenging social constructivism
- Children may understand social concepts (like ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’) before the intention reading stage starts.
- There is a fundamental lack of evidence – we cannot truly know what happens in a child’s brain.
159
Who proposed the types of overextension (categorical, analogical, mismatched)?
Leslie Rescorla
160
Michael Tomasello
- Children develop language by picking up patterns and recurring sequences out of linguistic constructions, from words that they hear around them.
- Criticises nativism as children learn words then rules.
161
Genie
- Supports the importance of social interaction in language development
- Genie was found as a teenager after being isolated for her whole life
- She could not speak and missed the critical period
- Though some language progress was made, it was still extremely limited
- Case study so cannot be generalised
- Possible ethical issues
162
Eric Lenneberg
Critical period in which a child needs to develop language. This critical period ends in puberty.
163
What theory does Bruner support?
Social interactionism
164
Cruttenden (1979)
Divided the aquisition of inflections into 3 stages:
1. Children Memorise Words
2. They show an awareness of the general rules of inflections, overgeneralistion of rules
3. Correct inflections are used
165
Deb Roy
Wanted to understand how his son used language so put cameras and microphones around his house and recorded 90,000 hours of home footage.
Highlighted the importance of care giver interaction and the role of reinforcement
166
Steven Pinker
Supports nativism
Innate Capacity to learn language, all language is evidence of a universal grammar, dissents from Chomsky's idea that evolutionary theory can explain the language instinct.
167
Berko and Brown
The "fis phenomenon" in child language acquisition, first reported by Berko and Brown, illustrates that children can perceive and understand sounds (phonemes) before they can produce them, meaning comprehension often precedes production.
This highlights that children can hear the difference between sounds (/s/ and /ʃ/ in the case of "fis" and "fish") even if they can't yet produce them correctly.
168
Hart and Risley
By age 3 children in low socioeconomic status families had a vocabulary of 525 words whereas children in upper socioeconomic status families had vocabulary of 1,116 words.
169
Erik Thiessen
Claimed that CDS can help children ‘segment’ words and acquire new vocabulary at a quicker rate
170
Elizabeth Spelke
- Focusing on the role of "core knowledge" (e.g. social cognition - they show preferences for their native language and can recognise social cues) and language in shaping human thought and understanding.
- She argues that infants possess innate, language-independent systems for thinking about objects and other aspects of the world, which then serve as a foundation for learning language and acquiring new concepts.
