child language acquisition - social interactionism Flashcards
What does Jerome Bruner (1983) argue about CLA?
- although children have a genetic predisposition for language, interaction with others is of vital importance in developing language skills
- caregivers build the scaffolding that helps a child develop language
What is the Language Acquisition Support System (LASS)?
- caregivers respond to children’s current level of development and facilitate their next steps
- this scaffolding can be gradually removed when their language is sufficient
Who impacts the LASS?
- parents/caregivers
- teachers/ other professionals
- the child’s environment
- the media
- friends/peers (pragmatic development with turntaking)
In what ways does a caregiver support children (LASS)?
- directing attention
- joint reading
- guidance (e.g. visual, verbal prompts, etc)
- encouraging the child and providing feedback through interactions
- providing examples for the child to imitate; games such as peekaboo (Bancroft (1996))
What is Lev Vygotsky’s (1934) theory?
- scaffolding is provided by a more knowledgeable other (MKO) - someone who has a higher level of ability than the learner
- they provide guidance and modelling to enable the child to learn skills within their zone of proximal development (ZPD) - the gap between what a child can do independently and what they can realistically achieve with guidance
- as a child’s competence grows = their ZPD expands to encompass new challenges
What is the importance of interaction in language acquisition?
- children learn language as they have a desire to communicate with those around them and that language develops depending on social interactions
- he saw that parents and preverbal children used games like peekaboo in ways that may be regarded as supporting the acquisition of language
What did Michael Tomasello argue about interaction?
- ‘social interactional routines such as feeding, diaper changing, bathing, interactive games, book reading, car trips and a host of other activities constitue the formats’
What is Catherine Snow’s theory?
- coined the term motherese to describe the language used by mothers to talk to their children
- argues that language acquisition happens as a result of the interaction which takes place between the mother and her child
- interactions with fathers use fatherese and anybody else uses otherese
What does John Snarey argue about fatherese?
- fathers interact with their children in different ways to the way their mothers do
- roughousing with the father teaches that biting, kicking and other forms of violence are unacceptable and how to gain self-control
What is part of the fatherese process, according to John Snarey?
- tickling, wrestling, throwing the child into the air, chasing, loud volume, bouncing rather than cuddling, rough rather than gentle, encouragement of competition, promotion of independence over security and less simplification of speech
How does Bard and Sach’s study support social interactionism?
- case study on a young boy, Jim, who was a hearing son of two deaf parents
- the parents wanted their son to learn speech rather than sign language so he watched TV and listened to the radio in order to hear language
- this exposure wasn’t enough as without associated verbal interaction it meant little to him - it was only when he acquired a language therapist that his speech improved significantly
How does Rhoades support the social interactionist argument?
adds the following as characteristics of CDS:
- short and simple sentences
- focus on what the child is doing, i.e. contingent talk
- repetition of what the child and caregiver say
- pausing between words
- higher frequency of interrogatives and imperatives
- slower speech
How does Kuhl support the social interactionist argument?
- it’s necessary for babies to have lots of face to face interaction to learn how to talk
- a baby’s interactions with others engages the social brain, a critical element for helping children to learn to communicate in their native and non-native languages
How do Carpenter et al support the social interactionist perspective?
- studied joint attentional engagement (like joint reading), gestures and understanding
- they found a positive correlation between parent-child social interactions and langauge skills which suggests that interaction is important in a child’s development of language
How does Bambi B Schieffelin challenge social interactionism?
- suggests that collected to support interactionist theory overrepresents MC, white, western families and may not be applicable to parent-child interactions in other cultures
- not every culture uses CDS e.g. in Samoa and Papa New Guinea, adults speak to children as they speak to adults and children still acquire language at the same pace
