Theories of Language Development

Why theories?

Theories offer approaches for working with children who require intervention.

Speech Act Theory

Language acquisition is based on semantic-pragmatic unit termed a speech act

What is the Functional Approach to Language and Cognition theory?

Children begin to build a representation of the world based on their experiences as they perceive, explore, and develop the ability to understand situations. They are born with the innate ability to analyze the situations in their environment being ready for social-cultural experiences.

What is the Behavioral Theory? (Nurture)

Operant conditioning consists of positive or negative reinforcements and modeling that elicits imitation.

What is the Principals and Parameters Theory? (Nature)

Children are born with an innate mechanism that provides the ability to develop syntax.

What is the social interaction theory?

Language develops through social interaction, children gain information from adults and children with greater knowledge.

What is the Cognitive theory?

Based on the idea that language acquisition and cognition are connected. Allow children to gain through experience within the external environment (schemas)

What is Emergentism?

Proposed that language learning based on the "emergent" effect to cognitive, social, pragmatic, and attentional factors

Theories are the _____ for investigating language.

framework

Speech acts frequently have an ____ or result in an _____

effect, action

What variety of utterances do speech acts consist of?

Statements, commands, questions, promises, requests

Speech Acts Theory focuses on a child’s ______ competence

communicative

Primative speech acts

reflect a young child’s early production of intention for a purpose or goal

What are examples of primative speech acts

Lableing, answering questions, calling, requesting, greeting, repeating, protesting

First stage of the speech act theory is __________. ______ involves the mental ability to acquire knowledge and understanding and ________ refers to an emotion that is expressed in a positive or negative facial expression

prelinguistic, cognition, affect

Second stage of speech acts theory is _______ and _______.

linguistic , pre-syntactic

This stage of language development in the Speech Acts Theory involves a single word indicating an underlying concept with the use of schemas.

Linguistic and pre-syntactic

The third stage of Speech Acts theory is _______. The production of multiple word utterances based on a child’s experience with the language used in events, action, and use within the enviroment.

Syntax

The functional approach to language and cognition incorporates schemas using ______, process of placing objects into memory and ______ process of recalling this information.

encoding, decoding

What are the three factors in the Functional Approach to Language and Cognition?

Functions, events, and culture

In the Behavioral Theory, positive reinforcement occurs for _____ children when utterances are not fully adultlike.

younger

In the Behavioral Theory, positive reinforcement occurs for _____ children when utterances are more adultlike.

older

Chaining

occurs when a behavior provides a cue to the next related behavior; Behavioral Theory

Based on the Behavioral Theory, syntax develops when children learn that one word predicts another ______ _______

ritualized action

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

A part of the human mind that provides children with the ability to grasp the basic structure of a language; Principles and Parameters Theory

Principles

innate language general rules, applies to all languages

Parameters

language specific rules that apply to syntactic rules for different languages

In Principles and Parameters, the basic mechanism for syntactic development is called _____

merge

Merge

combines two syntactic objects to create a new object

In the Social Interaction Theory, learning takes place through exposure to the use of language as adults, or older peers label, describe, or discuss….

State of mind, entities, actions, events

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Distance between what children can do by themselves and concepts or skills that they can learn with assistance from adults or children with more advanced language skills; Social Interaction Theory

Scaffolds

used to support speech and language development in the Social Interaction Theory

object permance

ability to produce words for entities or events that are out of sight; Cognitive Theory’ achieved around 10 months

The role of _____ is essential in the Cognitive Theory

play

Emergentism Cognitive skills

Theory of Mind, intention reading, and pattern finding

Emergentism Social skills

child’s desire to interact with others

Emergentism Pragmatic skills

methods of interaction during play and conversation

Emergentism Attentional factors

ability to focus on a conversation or a task

Intention reading (Emergentism)

understanding a speaker’s goal and meaning associated with a specific linguistic form

Pattern finding (Emergentism)

Sensitivity to regularities in the language that they hear in the environment