Child Language Development

What are the 4 approaches to child language development?

• Behaviourist

• Nativist

• Cognitive

• Social/interactionist

What is the behaviourist theory?

• BF Skinner

• Positive and negative reinforcement

• Learn language through environment

• Relies on other people

What is the cognitive theory?

• Piaget

• You have to understand language before you use it

• Social vs egocentric (us vs I)

What is the nativist theory?

• Noam Chomsky

• Genes help us learn language

• Biological/innate process

• Activate language acquisition device (LAD)

What is the social theory?

• Jerome Bruner

• Shared reading

• Learning through interaction

• Copying other speech

Poverty of stimulus

Lack of language heard so LAD doesn’t activate

Critical period

Children have an easier ability to pick up a language when they are younger (before hitting puberty)

Language learning study by Boston university

• Children are proficient at learning a language up to 18

• Nearly impossible to reach native-level fluency after age 10

Catherine Snow (1972)

• Investigated speech of mothers, comparing speaking to a 10 vs 2 year old

• Younger child: Higher pitch + exaggerated intonation, repetition of child’s name, questions + commands, recasts

Mark Vandam (2015)

• Female vs male caregivers

• Female: supportive language, melodic intonation

• male: More likely to resemble talk to adults, less sing song intonation, less likely to be simplified

Schliefflen and Ochs

• Child directed speech makes language acquisition easier

• Other studies show children appear to learn language just as well when their primary caregivers don’t use child-directed speech

• World cultures dont use CDS, e.g Kaluli tribe, Papa New Guinea. Still develop language.

• Children learn through listening to other adults converse

Virtuous error

Grammatical error made by young children. Non-standard utterances reveals some understanding, though incomplete, of standard grammar.

Jean Berko 1950s

• Study into children’s pronunciation + morphological development

• Study into use of -s plural

• Imaginary creature shown called a “wug”

• ¾ of the 4/5 year olds said more than one would be “wugs”

Chomsky vs Skinner

• Skinner suggested children learned + imitated those around them

• Chomsky said it is impossible to have heard every sentence they would need when talking e.g sentences like, “colourless green ideas sleep furiously” which doesn’t make sense but is grammatically correct.

What are piaget’s 4 stages of development?

• Sensorimotor (2) - object permanence

• Preoperational (2-7) - symbolic thought

• Concrete operational (7-11) - operational thought

• Formal operational (12+) - abstract concepts