child language acquisition

Question 1

what was B.F. Skinner’s theory?

Answer 1

the behaviourist theory, published in Verbal Behaviour (1957), experimented on rats and pigeons to propose the theory that all behaviour is a result of conditioning, children learn through operant conditioning, positive reinforcement, and negative reinforcement

Question 2

what is meant by operant conditioning (Skinner)?

Answer 2

the idea that either a positive or negative response given by a caregiver can influence the way in which a child talks on future occasions

Question 3

what is meant by positive reinforcement (Skinner)?

Answer 3

the positive feedback given to a child which is thought to encourage similar performance again

Question 4

what is meant by negative reinforcement (Skinner)?

Answer 4

the lack of feedback, correction or negative feedback that might prevent a child from making the same error repeatedly

Question 5

what are the problems with Skinner’s theory?

Answer 5

children are more likely to be corrected on the truth value of their utterances rather than the linguistic accuracy so negative enforcement does not occur very often, there is evidence to suggest that children do not respond to correction and that it can actually hamper their language development, one of the main arguments against the imitation theory is the fact that children do not suddenly produce grammatically complete Standard English sentences which you might expect from imitation, instead they build up language gradually

Question 6

what is meant by communicative competence?

Answer 6

the ability to form accurate and understandable utterances, using the grammar system, and to understand social context for using them

Question 7

what are proto words?

Answer 7

made up words that a child will use to represent a word they might not yet be able to pronounce for example ‘ray rays’ for ‘raisins’

Question 8

what are the stages of spoken language acquisition?

Answer 8

pre verbal, holophrastic, two word, telegraphic and post-telegraphic

Question 9

what is the pre-verbal stage?

Answer 9

a period of time that involves experimenting with noises and sounds but without producing recognisable words - usually lasting for the majority of the baby’s first year

Question 10

what are the sub sections of the pre verbal stage?

Answer 10

crying, cooing, babbling

Question 11

what is the purpose of crying in the pre verbal stage?

Answer 11

the first noise a baby will make, physical reasoning like hunger, wind, or tiredness, different intensities of crying can mean different things, baby beginning to exercise their vocal cords and understand that making a noise will gain the attention of people around them

Question 12

what is cooing in the pre verbal stage?

Answer 12

begins at around 2 months old, distinct from crying but not yet forming recognisable vowels and consonants, baby experiments with noises that can be made when the tongue and back of mouth come into contact, more experimental than crying

Question 13

what is babbling in the pre verbal stage?

Answer 13

from about six months, vocal play that involves forming vowel and consonant sounds, which can be reduplicated or variegated

Question 14

what is reduplicated babbling?

Answer 14

simpler and appears first, involves a child repeatedly making the same sounds e.g. bababababa

Question 15

what is variegated babbling?

Answer 15

emerges slightly later and involves variation in the consonant and vowel sounds being produced, still doesn’t resemble recognisable word on the whole e.g. daba, manamoo

Question 16

what is the holophrastic stage?

Answer 16

between 12 and 18 months, first word around first birthday and in this stage a child conveys a whole sentence worth of meaning in a single word or labels things in the environment around them, deliberately conveying meaning through word choice, large proportion of first words are nouns such as ‘Mummy’ or ‘Daddy’ or concrete nouns

Question 17

what is non verbal communication?

Answer 17

all the ways in which communication occurs that do not involve words, such as gestures, facial expressions and noises to clarify the intended meaning to the caregiver

Question 18

what is meant by reduplication?

Answer 18

repeated syllables within a word e.g. baa baa for blanket

Question 19

what is meant by diminutives?

Answer 19

the reduction in scale of an item through the ways this word is created, often by addition e.g. doggie

Question 20

what is meant by addition?

Answer 20

adding an additional suffix to the end of a word in order to change the way in which the word is pronounced and interpreted e.g. mummy and dolly instead of mum and doll

Question 21

what is the two word stage?

Answer 21

period of time when a child begins to put two words together e.g. kick ball, beginning at around 18 months

Question 22

what is the telegraphic stage?

Answer 22

period of time when a child’s utterances will be three words and more, there might be omission of some words with key words included, beginning around age 2

Question 23

what are content words?

Answer 23

words within a sentence that are vital to convey meaning

Question 24

what are grammatical words?

Answer 24

words within a sentence that are necessary to demonstrate structural accuracy

Question 25

what is the post telegraphic stage?

Answer 25

around age three, period of time when a child’s language will include both content and grammatical words and more closely resemble adult speech

Question 26

what is meant by operant conditioning? (Skinner)

Answer 26

the idea that either a positive or negative response given by a caregiver can influence the way in which a child talks on future occasions

Question 27

what is meant by positive reinforcement? (Skinner)

Answer 27

the positive feedback given to a child which is thought to encourage similar performance again

Question 28

what is meant by negative reinforcement? (Skinner)

Answer 28

the lack of feedback, correction, or negative feedback that might prevent a child from making the same error repeatedly

Question 29

what is meant by language acquisition device (LAD)?

Answer 29

as proposed by Chomsky, the idea that all humans are born with an innate language learning capacity

Question 30

what is meant by tabula rasa?

Answer 30

latin for ‘blank slate’ and the term used to describe the idea that children are born with undeveloped, fresh brains, as proposed by Aristotle

Question 31

what is meant by universal grammar?

Answer 31

term coined by Chomsky - the notion that all human languages possess similar grammatical features which the brain is hard wired to be able to decode and use

Question 32

what is meant by virtuous errors?

Answer 32

grammatical errors that are understandable and logical through an incorrect assumption being made about grammatical rules, seems to be evidence for Chomsky’s language acquisition device

Question 33

what is meant by the critical period?

Answer 33

the age at which a child will be the most receptive to language (suggested by Lenneberg to be up to the age of five)

Question 34

what is meant by cognitive development?

Answer 34

a child’s development of thinking and understanding

Question 35

what is meant by language acquisition support system (LASS)?

Answer 35

system as proposed by Bruner, i.e. the caregivers and other individuals who play a key role in a child’s language development

Question 36

what is meant by scaffolding? (Vygotsky and Bruner)

Answer 36

the support provided by caregivers through modelling how speech ought to take place, in order to help a child’s language development

Question 37

what is meant by egocentric?

Answer 37

thinking only of themselves, without regard for the feelings of others

Question 38

what is meant by object permanence?

Answer 38

an understanding that objects continue to exist even when they can’t be seen or touched

Question 39

what is meant by more knowledgeable other (MKO)?

Answer 39

the older participant in an interaction who might offer support to a child so that they can further their own development or learning (Vygotsky)

Question 40

what is meant by the zone of proximal development (ZPD)?

Answer 40

describes the area between what a child can already do and what is beyond their reach, it is the area into which a caregiver might be able the child to progress into by offering the necessary support or scaffolding to facilitate learning (Vygotsky)

Question 41

what is meant by usage based linguistics (Tomasello)

Answer 41

a model that emphasises that language structure emerges from use in that linguistic patterns are formed and become what we know as grammatical constructions.

Question 42

what is child directed speech (CDS)?

Answer 42

the various ways which a caregiver might adapt their speech (unconsciously) in order to aid a child in their linguistic development

Question 43

what is meant by expansion (CDS)?

Answer 43

where a caregiver might develop the child’s utterance to make it more grammatically complete

Question 44

what is meant by recast (CDS)?

Answer 44

the grammatically incorrect utterance of a child is spoken back to the child but in the corrected form

Question 45

what are mitigated imperitives?

Answer 45

an instruction given in such a way that it does not appear to be a command but more of a gentle suggestion

Question 46

what is Eric Lenneburg’s theory on theory on the critical period?

Answer 46

children are most receptive to language up to the age of five, in the first few years of life children must have social interaction and exposure to language to gain full mastery of the language, goes against/disproves Chomsky’s LAD

Question 47

what case study is in support of Lenneberg’s critical period theory?

Answer 47

Genie was locked up between the age of 20 months and 13 years, had no social interaction, when found she had no speech and could not acquire language beyond a basic level

Question 48

What is Jerome Bruner’s theory on social interactionism?

Answer 48

rejected Chomsky’s LAD and focused on the importance of interaction with caregivers as the key to language development, suggested the importance of the LASS (language acquisition support system)/caregivers who would help the child through scaffolding, placed emphasis on social situations where a child is presented with countless opportunities to acquire language with the help of significant adults who provide meaningful input

Question 49

how does Bruner differ from Skinner?

Answer 49

instead of imitation and positive/negative reinforcement, he focused on the need for quality input from caregivers e.g. if a child thought a zebra was a horse the caregiver might explain what the differences are (could be through recasts/expansion)

Question 50

what is Piaget’s cognitive theory?

Answer 50

children would not develop until particular stages of cognitive development had been reached, children develop their own understanding through exploring and questioning the world around them, cognitive ability needs to be present for the language to reflect this i.e. to use comparative adjectives need to understand size and scale

Question 51

what is analogical overextension?

Answer 51

extending a label from one item to another by connecting their functions or how they are perceived, although the connections may have some logic to them, they differ from existing categories

Question 52

what is categorical overextension?

Answer 52

inappropriately extending the meaning of a label to other members of the same category, for example, a child calling all leafy green vegetables cabbage

Question 53

what is a hypernym?

Answer 53

the name of a category, for example vegetable is a hypernym and carrot, cabbage and onion are all hyponyms

Question 54

what is a hyponym?

Answer 54

the name of a category member for example carrot is a hyponym of the category vegetable

Question 55

what is a mismatch or predicate statement?

Answer 55

when a child makes a connection based on what is normally the case but is not the case on this particular occasion

Question 56

what are the three stages in Aitcheson’s model of language acquisition?

Answer 56

labelling, packaging, network building

Question 57

what is labelling (Aitcheson)?

Answer 57

associating sounds with objects in the world around the child, linking words to things, understanding the concept of labels

Question 58

what is packaging (Aitcheson)?

Answer 58

starting to explore the extent of the label - often the stage during which over and under extensions occur most frequently, e.g establishing what makes his animal a cat as opposed to a bird or a snail

Question 59

network building (Aitcheson)

Answer 59

making connections between the labels they have developed, understanding opposites and similarities, relationships and contrasts e.g. making connections between cat as a label and the cat as a member of the broader category ‘animal’

Question 60

addition

Answer 60

adding an extra vowel sound to create a CVCV structure e.g. doggy instead of dog

Question 61

deletion

Answer 61

leaving out the last consonant of a word so a word like mouse becomes mou

Question 62

reduplication

Answer 62

the repetition of particular sounds and structures e.g. choochoo

Question 63

substitution

Answer 63

one sound is swapped for another, easier sound e.g. rabbit becomes wabbit

Question 64

consonant cluster reduction

Answer 64

children find it difficult to produce consonant clusters (groups of two or more consonants) so will reduce them to smaller units e.g. frog becomes fog

Question 65

deletion of unstressed syllables

Answer 65

the removal of an entire unstressed syllable from a word e.g. pretending becomes tending

Question 66

assimilation

Answer 66

a process in which substitution occurs, but the sound changes because of other sounds around it, to be substituted for one closer to others in the word e.g. doggy becomes goggy

Question 67

gestalt expression

Answer 67

refers to the way in which children at a certain stage can compress a string of words into a single utterance, e.g. wassat instead of what is that

Question 68

what is Brown’s 1973 theory on the two word stage?

Answer 68

many two-word utterances fit into a common set of patterns often with the doer and what is done, an action and the thing being acted upon or an object and it’s qualities

Question 69

overgeneralisation

Answer 69

applying a rule and assuming that every example follows the same system, without realising that there are exceptions

Question 70

what do Chomsky and nativists say about the behaviourist model?

Answer 70

behaviourist approach could not explain how children’s language develops, partly because what children hear around them is not a useful model to pick up (‘poverty of the stimulus’) and partly because they are capable of saying things they can’t have heard before

Question 71

what does Aitcheson and Saxton argue about nativist theory?

Answer 71

the ‘puzzle-solving equipment’ that is innate in children links to different things not just language ‘general purpose cognitive learning mechanisms’ include the ability to spot patterns and make contrasts, or grasp the probability of one thing following another

Question 72

what are the arguments against nativism?

Answer 72

the child’s language environment provides much richer language data than Chomsky acknowledged, parents and caregivers interact with children to give them input and relevant context, helping them to acquire language, if there is an inbuilt capacity for language it is not the product of a specific language related facility but something that is linked to many other areas of understanding and development

Question 73

what are the key features of CDS?

Answer 73

more pronounced intonation, drawing attention to morphemes or words, simplified vocabulary, repeated grammatical frames, simplified grammar, tag questions, para-linguistic features, recasting, more obvious lip and mouth movements

Question 74

which theorists find positive correlation between CDS and linguistic achievement?

Answer 74

Wells, Hart and Risley, Thissen et al, Henrichs

Question 75

Oxana case study

Answer 75

At only three years old, she was thrown out of the house by her alcoholic parents, forcing her to live among the dogs for warmth. Rejected by the human world, she quickly learned the animal habits necessary to survive. Oxana managed to keep this up for six years, eating raw meat, barking, walking on all fours, and sleeping in a kennel. Despite all odds, Oxana has made an astonishing recovery. She is now 28 and living in a home for the mentally handicapped. Not only does she have impressive language skills, which is very rare for a former feral child. She was socially adept enough that she had a boyfriend for a brief time at age 22. Unfortunately, she chose to show him how she could run and bark like a dog, which was so convincing it sent him running like a scared mailman.

Question 76

Genie case study

Answer 76

She is one of the most severe cases of neglect ever documented. The first thirteen years of her life she was strapped to a toilet, kept inside, isolated from society, and forced to be in a crib where she couldn’t move her arms and legs. Her father, who constantly abused her, would keep her trapped inside, barking & growling at her. He grew his nails out to purposely scratch her. Genie’s mother was nearly blind and couldn’t defend herself from her hostile husband. Psychologists later realized his aggression came from the death of his mother making him feel as if the world was a failure. In October of 1970, Genie’s older brother ran away from the negative environment and told authorities what his father was up to. November 4 was the first time Genie ever saw daylight.
Psychologists began research studies on Genie. They tried to teach her how to speak and help her to live a normal life. As she began to progress, they began to constantly move her place to place. She began to stay silent and stopped progressing. Genie is now in a mental ward, and is kept from most doctors who used study and help her.

Question 77

Shamedo case study

Answer 77

Shamedo was taken to a Catholic mission after allegedly being found in the forest living with wolves. Shamedo, who was around three or four years old at the time, was covered in matted hair and had calluses on his elbows, palms, and knees.
According to Father Joseph de Souza, Shamedo learned to stand upright in about five months, and within two years he was doing chores around the mission. He was never capable of speech, but Shamedo did lead to communicate through sign language.
Father John also noted that Shamedo no longer caught and ate live chickens, but he was still drawn to the sent of blood.
The fact that Shamedo lived among wolves has never been authenticated.

Question 78

what is Piaget’s sensorimotor stage?

Answer 78

0-2 years, a child begins to interact with their environment, using their senses and physical movement to do so, during this stage, a child remains egocentric and an understanding of object permanence appears

Question 79

what is Piaget’s pre-operational stage?

Answer 79

2-6/7 years, learning to speak and developing imaginative focus, become capable of representing the world symbolically, remain egocentric and struggle to understand other points of view, begin to question frequently and try to develop an understanding of things

Question 80

what is Piaget’s concrete operational stage?

Answer 80

6/7-11/12 stops being egocentric and begins to understand other points of view, more capable of logical thought

Question 81

what is Piaget’s formal operational stage?

Answer 81

11-16 years no longer a problem with logical thought

Question 82

what is Vygotsky’s theory? (social interactionism)

Answer 82

scaffolding, suggested the importance of ‘doing’ for a child’s development and the importance of a caregiver to act as a more knowledgeable other, the older participant in an interaction who might offer support to a child so that they can further their own development or learning, MKO can direct the child within their zone of proximal development and provide support of scaffolding for the child to progress beyond their current ability

Question 83

what is Tomasello’s cognitive linguistic theory?

Answer 83

further rejection of Chomsky’s universal grammar, usage based model of acquisition and development, the ability to learn language is primarily social and relies on using the same kinds of cognitive processes as learning to walk, write, draw etc., by the age of 9-12 months, children make use of a pattern forming ability that enables them to learn about the different forms and functions of single words and to understand the intentional aspect of language, children use this to build generalisations about how those words form larger syntactic constructions which become building blocks for using various grammatical patterns, instead of being a result of built in grammar, usage based linguistics advocates the child actively building, then using templates for grammatical structures based on sensory input and interaction with caregivers

Question 84

what is Vygotsky’s theory on play?

Answer 84

play will in turn support language development, both Piaget and Vygotsky considered the importance of exploration of environment in cognitive development, social interaction with others was absolutely critical in developing understanding and that play facilitated learning: “a child’s greatest achievements are possible in play, achievements that tomorrow will become her basic level of real action”

Question 85

what is Catherine Garvey’s theory?

Answer 85

published ‘play the developing child’ in which she considered the importance of play to language development, she focused particularly on the value of pretend play which can help vocabulary growth

Question 86

what is Susan Ervin Tripp’s theory?

Answer 86

wrote ‘play in language development’ she considered the importance of play to language development since children can learn from each other and have to work collaboratively in a way that does not occur in interactions with adults, also argued that imaginative play is critical for children to experience language in unfamiliar and different ways

Question 87

what are Halliday’s language functions?

Answer 87

instrumental (to ask for something), regulatory (to control other’s behaviour), interactional (to develop relationships), personal (to express views), imaginatively (explore creatively/play), and representational (to give or receive information)

Question 88

How many words are children with high social economic status exposed to?

Answer 88

11,000

Question 89

How many words are children with low socioeconomic status exposed?

Answer 89

700

Question 90

How old was Oxana when she was found?

Answer 90

7 and a half

Question 91

How old was genie when she was found?

Answer 91

13

Question 92

How old was shamedo when he was found?

Answer 92

3-4