CLA Flashcards
What are the four main theories of language acquisition?
- Behavioural
- Cognitive
- Nativist
- Interactionalist
Who is the main theorist for behavioural theory?
Skinner.
Who is the main theorist for cognitive theory?
Piaget.
Who is the main theorist for nativist theory?
Chomsky.
Who is the main theorist for interactional theory?
Bruner.
Outline the behavioural theory:
- Environment.
- Imitating caregivers.
- Modifying use of language due to operant conditioning (positive/negative reinforcement).
What does operant conditioning provide? (Behavioural)
Teaches child mistakes to avoid + correct them.
- Correct use = telling the child they’re clever + providing a request they have made (e.g. giving them food).
- Incorrect use = told they are wrong then corrected.
Outline nativist theory:
- Born with an innate drive for learning language (LAD).
- Biological.
- LAD is a baseline for understanding grammatical structure.
- LAD contains knowledge of universal grammar (shared grammar rules that all human languages share).
What supports that language acquisition is biological rather than behavioural?
As children learn new words they can incorporate them independently.
Outline interactionalist theory:
- children are born with ability to develop language but require regular interactions with caregivers/teachers to understand fluently (LASS).
- Caregivers correct mistakes + teach what objects are/their purpose = helps scaffolding.
Outline cognitive theory:
- Internal processes + schemas.
- Applying schemas through assimilation (fitting new info to what is already known) + accommodation (changing schema to support new Info).
- Before language development -> can’t express things they can’t understand.
- There are four stages.
What are the four stages within cognitive theory?
- Sensorimotor
- Pre-operational
- Concrete operational
- Formal operational
Outline the sensorimotor stage (cognitive):
- From birth to 2 years old.
- Develop sensory coordination by playing with things.
- Babbling + few spoken words.
Outline the pre-operational stage (cognitive):
- From 2 to 7 years.
- Better grasp of: grammatical structure, context, syntax.
- Language is still egocentric (understanding of the world is limited to how it affects them).
Outline the concrete operational stage (cognitive):
- From 7 to 11 years.
- Understand concepts: time,numbers, object properties, reasoning, logic.
- Allows them to speak in greater detail about own thoughts.
- Understand different viewpoints.
Outline the formal operational stage (cognitive):
- From 12 to adulthood.
- Engage in higher reasoning such as hypotheticals.
- Language is unlimited (no cognitive limit).
What criticism did Tomasello provide for Chomsky (Nativism)
Chomsky is an armchair theorist and his ideas were only speculative/uncertain.
What case studies critised Nativism?
- Genie Wiley
- Oxana
Outline the Genie Wiley case study:
A teenage girl who had been locked away from all social interaction. Following her rescue, attempts to teach her English only ever produced partial success, and she never achieved full grammatical competence.
Outline the Oxana case study:
A young girl who had lived with a pack of dogs, when she was found she could hardly speak and ran on all fours barking. Since being taught language; her speech is odd, without rhythm, inflection
or tone and can still communicate through barking.
What critism did Lenneberg provide for Nativism?
Proposed that the capacity to learn a language is innate but that if a child does not learn a language before the onset of puberty, the child will never master language at all; this is known as the critical period hypothesis.
Evidence: feral children such as Genie and Oxana.
Which case studies support Nativism?
- Berko ‘Wug test’
- Pinker ‘Deaf babies’
Outline Berko’s ‘Wug test’:
When faced with a picture of an imaginary ‘wug’:
- 76% of four-to-five-year-olds formed the regular –s plural.
- 97% of five –to-seven-year-olds formed the regular –s plural
Findings: very young children are able to connect suitable suffixes to produce plurals, past tenses, possessives, etc to nonsense words they have never heard before.
Implying that they have already internalized systematic aspects of the linguistic system.
Outline Pinkers ‘Deaf babies’:
language is an innate human ability because:
- Deaf babies “babble” with their hands as others normally do with voice, and spontaneously invent sign languages with true grammar.
- Even in the absence of active attempts by parents to correct children’s grammar, accurate speech develops.
