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Question 1

Piaget

Answer 1

Stages of congnitive development 1936
• sensorimotor (age 0-2): child egocentric, begins to interact with world and use sense/movement
• pre-operational (age 2-7): still egocentric, learning to speak and develop imagination, begin to think symbolically and question often

Question 2

Halliday

Answer 2

Functions of child language 1975
• instrumental - fulfil a need e.g. drink
• interactional - builds relationships
• heuristic - question world around
• regulatory - control care givers behaviour
• personal - express own feelings
• imaginative - explore creativity during play
• representational - exchange information

Question 3

Brown

Answer 3

MLU (mean length utterance) 1973
• 15-30 months - 1.75
• 28-36 months - 2.25
• 36-42 months - 2.75

Question 4

Examples of CDS not being important

Answer 4

Kalui tribe 1984 in Papa New Guinea

Question 5

Catherine Garvey

Answer 5

Play 1977
• play is important
• allows babies to develop heuristic and imaginative language (Halliday)
• allows babies to work collaboratively

Question 6

Dr Casper Addyman

Answer 6

Babies prefer motherese (high energy, sing song tone)

However there is no evidence to suggest it develops babies language better

Question 7

Eve Clark

Answer 7

Over and under extension
• over extension: more specific term used for a more general noun e.g. all men “daddy”
• under extension: think “car” only refers to mummy’s car
• proves that precise understanding comes after initial acquisition of a word

Question 8

Clarke-Stewart

Answer 8

Study in 1973
• found that children whose mothers talked more had larger vocabularies
• shows that children are influenced by those around them

Question 9

Katherine Nelson

Answer 9

Corrections 1973
• found that children at the holophrastic stage whose mothers corrected them on word choice and pronunciation actually advanced more slowly than those with mothers who were generally accepting

Question 10

Berko and Brown

Answer 10

“Fis” test 1960
• spoke to a child who said fish as “fis”. Brown replied also with “fis”. Child said “no, fis” to which brown responded with “fish”. Child said yes “fis”
• study shows that babies do not hear themselves like they hear others and no amount of correcting will change this

Question 11

Pinker

Answer 11

Supports Nativism 1994
• need to develop language is unique to humans
• instinctive like a spider’s ability to create a web
• innate ability in our brain

Question 12

Bancroft

Answer 12

Turn taking 1996

• traditional games such as peekabo imitate turn taking

Question 13

Bloom

Answer 13

Mummy sock study 1973

• proved that during the telegraphic stage, inflectional suffixs such as plural “s” and past tense “ed” are often absent

Question 14

Mehler

Answer 14

Language recognition test 1988

• a study that proved a 4 day old french baby was able to distinguish French from other languages

Question 15

Fitzpatrick

Answer 15

Heart rate of unborn baby 2002
• heart rate of a bay in the womb slows when it hears it’s mother’s voice
• suggests a calming, soothing influence

Question 16

Skinner

Answer 16

Behaviorism 1957
• came up with operant conditioning
• positive and negative feedback
• supports Aristotle’s concept of “Tabula Rasa” (blank slate)

Question 17

Bruner

Answer 17

LASS 
• Language Acquisition Support System
• response to Chomsky's LAD
• scaffolding
• came up with CDS

Question 18

Vygotsky

Answer 18

Interactionalism (ideas popularised in the 70’s)
• stressed the importance of doing and the usefulness of caregivers
• more knowledgeable other
• zone of proximal development

Question 19

Chomsky

Answer 19

Nativism 60’s
• universal grammar
• LAD
• virtuous errors prove universal grammar

Question 20

Tomasello

Answer 20

Usage based model 2003
• ability to develop language is socially driven (human pre-disposition to cooperate and collaborate)
• relies on the same cognitive processes and learning to walk and ride a bike
• identified that by age 9-12 months, children gain the ability to form patterns, language can only be learnt by being used

Question 21

Sinclair and Coulthard

Answer 21

IRF 1975

• Initiation Response Feedback

Question 22

Features of CDS

Answer 22

• higher or melodic pitch
• more frequent and longer pauses
• slower and clearer speech
• repetition
• grammatically simpler sentences
• more questions
• use of diminutives
• use of nouns rather than pronouns
• expansion - where the caregiver elaborates on the utterance given by the child
• recasts - where the caregiver may repeat a child’s utterance but provide a correct version e.g. “I runned” - “you ran?”
• mitigated imperatives

Question 23

Jean Berko Gleason

Answer 23

Wug test 1958
• over 75% of children able to identify that the plural of one wug are “wugs”
• argued as proof of universal grammar as no child would have seen this example before
Investigation of male vs female caregivers 1975
• concluded that fathers tended to tease chldren more and use more commands
• the child was referred to the mother should any domestic arise
• study was over 40 years ago, often criticised as outdated

Question 24

Stages of child language development

Answer 24

• pre-verbal: before speech
• non-verbal: non speech actions e.g. pointing (accessed at any stage)
• holophrastic: sounds that express meaning (often monosyllabic
• two word: two different sounds
• telegraphic: connective grammar introduced e.g. “apple I have”, knowledge of determiners, pronouns, plurality and tense is still limited
• post telegraphic: complete language

Question 25

Lenneburg

Answer 25

Critical period (popularised by Lenneburg) 
• roughly between the ages of around 2 and 13 where children are most receptive to language development

Question 26

Bard and Sachs

Answer 26

Case study of Jim 1977
• son of deaf parents
• despite being exposed to the tv and radio, his speech was severely under developed
• this implies that social interaction is necessary and crucial to develop speech

Question 27

Bellugi

Answer 27

Pronoun development
• Stage 1 - Child refers to him or herself using his/her name. Pronouns are not used
• Stage 2 - Personal pronoun ‘I’ appears followed by ‘me’, placement within the sentence is not always secure
• Stage 3 - The child understands the subject/object positions of ‘I’ and ‘me’. Second and third person pronouns are introduced.