4 approaches to child language acquisition

Cognitivism (Jean Piaget)

• Approach: earning knowledge and understanding comes before learning language. Language affects thought processes, cognition plays primary role in emotional and behavioural development.

children can only produce linguistic structures when they understand concepts behind it.

• problems: behaviourists reluctant to study because cognition occurs inside the ‘black box’ of the brain and it’s difficult to make precise connections between cognitive and linguistic development

• Evidence: over extension and under extension

Behaviourism (B.F Skinner)

• Approach: language learning is ‘cause and effect’. Imitation. Learnt like any habit through external stimuli. All behaviours can be explained without considering internal mental state. Caregivers reinforce and ‘correct’ utterances.

• Problems: children do not automatically pick up ‘correct’ forms of language from imitation. Grammatical structures are not learnt by imitation. Fails to explain how children produce sounds they’ve never heard.

• Evidence: imitation, positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement

Innateness (Noam Chomsky)

• Approach: children born with an in-built capacity for language development. The brain has a LAD (Language Acquisition Device) - biologically programmed for speech and provides us with innate understanding and ability to discover grammatical rules

• Problems: LAD = abstract concept that requires scientific evidence and the theory is based on competence of language learner (abstract).

• Evidence: virtuous errors (over application of grammatical system), application of various morphemes, use of grammatical structures that child has never heard before.

Social Interaction (Vygotsky and Bruner)

• Vygotsky’s sociocultural model: cultural developments happen when children observe others interacting. Children learn best when interacting and problem solving with adults

• Bruner’s learning development model: Learners learn best when discovering knowledge for themselves. Adult and child interaction builds social structures.

• Problems: never identified precise links between language structures used by parents and appearance in child’s own language. Aitchison suggests caregiver speech is often non standard - hinders child development.

• evidence: CDS. When child is trying to involve themself. Questions from caregiver. Interaction functioning to form social bonds. Collaborative interaction.