Child Language spoken Acquisition Flashcards
there are two explanations for Child Language Acquisition - ______ and _______
Nature Nurture
what is Skinner’s Language acquisition Theory called?
Behaviourist Theory
Skinner claims that children acquire language by what?
imitating the speech of others and being rewarded for it
what does Skinner call this?
‘Operant conditioning’
Skinner says there are two types of Operant Conditioning - ________ __________ and ________ _____________
positive reinforcement negative reinforcement
who criticises skinner?
Chomsky
How does Chomsky criticise skinner?
he claims language used by adults speaking to children is impoverished. children would never be adult speakers if they only copied their parents language toward them.
how can you find evidence for skinner in a transcript?
through the parent correcting the child, or rewarding them.
Who proposes the idea of the ‘fis’ phenomenon
Berko and Brown
how can skinner be criticised?
children can apply bound morphemes without hearing the word before e.g ‘wugs’
what is the ‘Fis’ phenomenon
it is a regularity in negative reinforcement through correction from parents in which the child does not correspond with the correct term after being told it. e.g ‘Fis’ ‘Fish’.
How to find support for skinner ,Berko and brown in the transcript:
adults modeling language and children responding.
children imitating/ repeating adults’ speech.
children learning or repairing mistakes after adult correction.
what is Nativism?
theory based off of Chomsky’s work.
he believes children have a Language Acquisition Device.
what is an LAD.
the ‘thing’ containing the innate ability to learn Language
Chomsky believes that children have knowledge of ________ ______ as all languages share the same ‘____ _______’
universal grammar
deep structure
virtuous errors support the existence of the…
LAD
evidence for Chomsky:
children acquire Language rapidly and in same stages
Slobin: human anatomy is adapted for speech
Surinam pidgins become creole through generations
evidence against Chomsky:
Genie - study by butler. she was locked up by her father until 13 and was never able to fully learn how to speak
Eric Lenneberg proposes the idea of _______ ______ which means that children have to be exposed to…
‘critical periods’ in Language Development
social interaction before the age of 5
what does Mcnamara say?
children have an innate capacity to read into social situations, conversely to Chomsky.
how to apply chomsky,mcnamara,lenneberg to data:
things such as over-extension and under-extension
children constructing sentences
children doing more than imitating adult speech
______ comes up with the idea of cognitivism
Piaget
Piaget claims Language acquisition is part of what?
wider cognitive development
what do ideas around wider cognitive development suggest?
that children can only acquire an aspect of language once they have the cognitive skills to understand the concept involved
Piaget’s three periods in children’s cognitive development that develop children’s Language:
classification
object permanence
seriation
‘Object permanence’ is when children learn that objects continue to exist outside of their experience. this leads to…
increase in children’s vocabularies, especially Nouns. refer to Nelson’s study on children’s most common fifty words.
‘classification’ causes children to learn to classify objects and actions -this leads to children…
learning division between nouns, verbs, adjectives. see structure in children’s language.
‘seriation’ causes children to learn that things come in a series or an order.
this is applied to language as children learn comparative terms
e.g. ‘bigger’ or ‘smaller’
case against piaget:
people with language difficulties do not have poor cognitive development and vice versa
how to apply piaget in data:
non present or imaginary objects
children failing to use or understand language, have not grasped the concept expressed
who came up with input theory ?
Bruner
what does input theory suggest
language used by parents is used to specifically aid children’s learning
what is Bruner’s L.A.S.S?
the language acquisition support system.
evidence for Bruner’s L.A.S.S
the fact that parents speak more slowly and simply to children for greater comprehension .
parents expand children’s speech
according to Bruner , how do parents introduce new words ?
repeated sentence frames e.g. “what’s this?”
Bruner presents another three aspects of child directed language which are :
parents using more pauses.
parents use of higher pitch and intonation to engage the child.
parents use more imperatives and interrogative to encourage engagement.
Bruner’s says parents use books for help children learn names of things in 4 ways:
gaining attention
querying
labelling
feedback
interactions with children use what in order to teach them about about spoken discourse structures ?
routines and rituals. e.g playing shop with a child - teaches turn taking and politeness.
who adds to bruner’s input theory ?
vygotsky.
what does vygotsky say about adults language ?
that it provides “ scaffolding “ in helping children forming an utterance
vygotsky says that the adult (or other person) acts as a MKO (more knowledgeable other). what does the MKO do ?
they help the child move within the “zone of proximal development” . the area that is just beyond what they can do.
how can you apply Bruner and Vygotskys ideas in the text?
“scaffolding”
children benefitting from their interaction
parents reinforcing children’s attempt to speak
conversation skills and pragmatic awareness being moderated and modelled.
