Child Language Development

Question 1

What is Behaviourism and who was it created by?

Answer 1

• Created by B.F Skinner
• Works on the idea of Classical Conditioning
• Skinner box experiments can be extended to CLD
• Children imitate for praise and want to avoid disapproval for wrong language

Question 2

What is Nativism and who was it created by?

Answer 2

• Created by Noam Chomsky
• Emphasis on nature, not nurture
• We are all born with a LAD, which works out universal grammar
• Language input is needed to stimulate the LAD, but parental input is poor

Question 3

What is Child Directed Speech and who was it created by?

Answer 3

• Created by Catherine Snow
• Shows that parents help their children to work out language
• Simplifies many features of language to help children acquire
• Opposes Nativism and suggests that input is very important

Question 4

What is Usage Based Theory and who was it created by?

Answer 4

• Created by Michael Tomasello
• Suggests that innate pattern finding ability extends to CLD
• Children start with small, reliable pockets of language
• Child language is built from the bottom up

Question 5

What is Cognitive Theory and who was it created by?

Answer 5

• Created by Jean Piaget
• At ages 2-7, children are in the selfish ‘preoperational’ stage
• Lexical development centres around a child’s own life
• Language development happens alongside cognitive development

Question 6

What is Social Interactionist Theory and who was it created by?

Answer 6

• Created by Jerome Bruner
• Instead of a LAD, there is a LASS, consisting of parents and carers
• The LASS provides support by scaffolding language
• Scaffolding and repetition help children to develop linguistic ability

Question 7

What is a proto-word?

Answer 7

A word that has one meaning, but a child applies it to many different things

Question 8

What is consonant assimilation?

Answer 8

Turning all or most of the consonants in a word into the same sound

Question 9

What is segmentation?

Answer 9

Separating one word from another, which young children struggle with

Question 10

What are Gestalt expressions?

Answer 10

When a child puts multiple words together in a single word, for example ‘hairbandin’

Question 11

What is deictic language?

Answer 11

Language that is used to point things out

Question 12

What is addition?

Answer 12

Adding vowel sounds onto the end of words

Question 13

What is final consonant deletion?

Answer 13

Leaving out the last consonant of a word, usually due to children not hearing adults emphasise final consonants

Question 14

What is reduplication?

Answer 14

Repeating the same word twice to describe a noun, for example, choo-choo to name a train

Question 15

What is substitution?

Answer 15

Certain sounds, such as fricatives, are harder for children to pronounce so they may change those sounds to plosives, for example

Question 16

What is consonant cluster reduction?

Answer 16

Children find groups of multiple consonants difficult, so will remove certain difficult clusters

Question 17

What is deletion of unstressed syllables?

Answer 17

Deleting unstressed syllables due to the child not hearing them, or not seeing enough of them to accurately copy the syllables

Question 18

What is consonant assimilation?

Answer 18

To make a word easier to pronounce, a child will change all of the consonants in the word to the same sound, without changing anything else

Question 19

What are expansions?

Answer 19

Longer utterances of a child’s language, for example, if a child says ‘chair’ the adult will say ‘it’s on the chair’, these are used to indirectly correct the child’s language

Question 20

What is fronting?

Answer 20

Sounds are brought to the front of the mouth, which makes them easier to pronounce

Question 21

What is stopping?

Answer 21

A child replaces a fricative consonant with a stop consonant, which is easier to pronounce

Question 22

What is gliding?

Answer 22

When liquid sounds (‘l’ or ‘r’) are replaced by glides (‘w’ or ‘j’), which are easier to see and replicate

Question 23

What is vocalisation?

Answer 23

A vowel will replace a consonant in a word, making it easier to pronounce

Question 24

What is vowel epenthesis?

Answer 24

Can sometimes happen when children encounter a difficult consonant cluster, putting a vowel in between two consonants, for example, ‘blue’ turns into ‘belu’

Question 25

What is the ‘Fis’ phenomenon?

Answer 25

Children are not able to replicate the adult pronunciation of a word, but will not accept their pronunciation when an adult says it (‘fish’ not ‘fis’)

Question 26

What is the critical period?

Answer 26

A period in which children should be exposed to language, otherwise they will be unable to grasp grammar, the critical period is up to age 5

Question 27

What is a social hotspot?

Answer 27

A place that a word is said most often when the child and carer are interacting, for example, food will be said a lot in the kitchen, these hotspots are based on environment, social interaction and context