Quiz 2

Question 1

what is a theory?

Answer 1

a systematic way of understanding events or situations. must be applicable to a broad variety of situations

they provide different perspectives and guide our assessments

Question 2

why theorize about language development?

Answer 2

understand how language development occurs- not referring to the development milestones but the human mechanisms that induce language (social interactions, modeling,, etc)

helps us understand our own behaviors (ex. language milestones)

language and cognition - understanding how underlying mechanisms facilitate language acquisition

Question 3

linguistic theories

Answer 3

aim to explain why language developments occur

generativist (noam chomsky and roger brown)

interactionist (jerome bruner)

Question 4

learning theories

Answer 4

aim to explain how children acquire language

behavioral (b.f. skinner)

cognitivist (jean piaget)

social constructiveness (lev vygotsky)

Question 5

nature

Answer 5

genetically predisposed (generative/nativist)

oral language is natural in humans, children produce speech with minimal environmental involvement

Question 6

nurture

Answer 6

environmental influences (interactionist)

language is learned or nurtured; children provided with good language models have an advantage over children from an economically and socially impoverished home by parents who provide few and inadequate language models

Question 7

noam chomsky

Answer 7

children are born with innate syntactic rules or principles that help shape the structures of human languages

SYNTAX

Question 8

roger brown

Answer 8

children abstract information based on meaning-based units to help shape what they practice

SEMANTICS

Question 9

according to generative/nativists approach, where are basic syntactic rules located?

Answer 9

Language Acquisition Device (LAD) in the brain to help humans learn language specific syntactic rules

Question 10

what are the two rule systems?

Answer 10

universal systems- every language in the world has a universal structure of nouns/verbs/adj.

language-specific system- start to become more intact after you gain more language and experiences

Question 11

language learning from generative/nativists approach

Answer 11

a child starts with their innate grammatical rules–> uses universal rules to abstract the structure of specific language they are learning

Question 12

roger brown

Answer 12

a social psychologist- suggested that chomsky’s model was not satisfactory in describing language development in children because most of the models were adult based and no evidence was present that could show that children used these adult linguistic categories to develop language

Question 13

beginning of semantic revolution

Answer 13

children used meaning units: agents, actions, object, attribute, entity, etc

Question 14

language learning from roger brown

Answer 14

a child abstracts meaning based units (agent, action, etc) –> structures language shaped by meaning

Question 15

what is the take home message of generavist?

Answer 15

language rules are INNATE

the child acquires the rules of their specific language because they have a genetically determined capacity for language learning

Question 16

interactionalist approach

Answer 16

jerome bruner - children learn language from interactions in their environment

focus on language use

uses language input to attempt output and notice regularities

Question 17

what is the take home message of interactionalist theory?

Answer 17

language is acquired through language experience

Question 18

behavioral learning theory

Answer 18

b.f. skinner

caregivers model language and then child imitates that model. it is then reinforced or punished by the parent

Question 19

what does “positive” mean in regards to the behavioral learning theory?

Answer 19

adding smtg or adding a behavior

Question 20

what does “negative” mean in regards to the behavioral learning theory?

Answer 20

taking something away

Question 21

what does reinforcement mean?

Answer 21

the behavior continues

Question 22

what does punished mean?

Answer 22

the behavior reduces in frequency or stops all together

Question 23

positive reinforcement

Answer 23

you are adding something (e.g. reward) and the behavior increases/continues

Question 24

negative reinforcement

Answer 24

you are taking something away to increase a behavior

ex) you want students to stay motivated in class so you remove homework

Question 25

positive punishment

Answer 25

you are adding something and the behavior reduces or stops

ex) you give your child a stern warning to get him to stop jumping on the couch

Question 26

negative punishment

Answer 26

something is taken away to decrease behavior (e.g. taking a teen’s phone to stop social media use)

Question 27

language learning mechanics of behaviorist

Answer 27

parents model language –>

stimuli introduced by imitaiton of model or initiating conversation –>

stimuli elicits a response from the parent with engaging or not engaging –>

consequences- the adult either reinforces or punishes

Question 28

cognitivist learning theory

Answer 28

jean piaget

learning occurs as the learner adjusts his or her mental model (SCHEMA) to adapt to new experiences

Question 29

schema

Answer 29

mental representation of items and events based on our experiences

Question 30

do humans build schemas early on or late in life?

Answer 30

early on

Question 31

assimilation

Answer 31

using existing schema to incorporate new information

when children encounter new information, they can assimilate that info to their existing schema

Question 32

accommodation

Answer 32

modifying existing schemas OR creating new ones

Question 33

language learning mechanics- cognitivist

Answer 33

child builds schemas based on experiences–>

when a child encounters a new experience, they make sense of the world by doing one of two things

assimilation
accomodation (modify or create new)

Question 34

social constructivist learning theory

Answer 34

lev vygotsky

knowledge is constructed within social contexts through interactions with a knowledge individual(s)

Question 35

zone of proximinal development (ZPD)

Answer 35

competence that a child demonstrates with minimal assistance

middle ground between the zone of competence (what they can do individually) and zone of incompetence(what they are unable to do even with assistance)

Question 36

language learning mechanics- social constructivist

Answer 36

caregiver identifies what the child can do independently –>

caregiver sees what the child can do with some support