cla theories Flashcards
behaviourism
skinner
says a child learns language based on positive and negative reinforcement of ideas
interactionism
believes that a child is born on a blank slate and learns language based on their interaction with caregiver - argues ‘nurture’
child directed speech
process of talking to a child
bruner
- believes a child must interact with caregiver to learn how to use language
- created LASS to ‘scaffold’ a child in learning language
LASS
language acquisition support system
catherine snow
created ‘mothese’ - the language used by mothers to talk to their children
strategies
bruner and snow
- recasting and reformulation - repeats what child says containing anything missing
- expansion - caregiver makes the utterance more complex by expanding on what they said
- exaggerated prosodic cues - exaggerating, varied pitch
- expatiation - expressing what child said giving more information
- over articulation - caregiver stretches out vowel sounds
grice’s maxims
- quantity
- quality
- manner
- relation
challenging interactionism
chomsky
questions how children produce utterances that are grammatically non standard to the point where no caregiver would have said them - errors often happen
myzor
believes that CDS helps to aid social development but doesn’t help linguistic development
nativism
chomsky
argues ‘nature’
poverty of stimulus
chomsky’s theory states that children can’t learn through the imitation of their caregivers alone because they produce a ‘poverty of stimulus’ which states that caregivers don’t provide a good enough standard of language and children must have something inbuilt to help learn language (LAD)
LAD
language acquisition device - turns off at age of 7 then is harder to learn languages
virtuous errors
errors made with good intentions
eg. ‘I hurted his feelings’
universal grammar
states a set of rules on how to structure language
the ‘wug’ test
berko
test invented nouns and verbs to test pluralisation and overgeneralisation
genie
case study supports chomsky as she had passed the critical age to learn how to speak, he would argue that her LAD expired and also supports idea that children can’t learn language from interaction with only caregivers
tomasello critics chomsky
dismissed chomsky as an ‘armchair linguist’ which questions validity of his theory
pinker critics chomsky
points out every utterance a child produces is a brand new combination of words so he questions whether a child can learn from imitation
cognitive theory
states that children need a cognitive understanding in order to use language so children cannot linguistically articulate what they don’t understand
cognitivism
piaget
children start life in a egocentric way so feel world revolves around them - often seen when a child starts cringe when primary caregiver moves out of sight
cognitive deficiency
vygotsky
theory proposes there’s a gap of knowledge - zone of proximal development - and states a more knowledgeable other is needed to help fill the gap
