SLP Praxis Review Theories of Language Section

Behaviorist Theory of Language Acquisition

Skinner

-Focus on verbal behavior not all language; innateness can't be observed

-This behavioral response is to events in environment and social interactions

-Relies on classical and operant conditioning

-Verbal behavior broken down into cause-effect (functional units)

-Tx: Language can be taught by targeting any observable behavior and manipulating the stimuli, response and reinforcement

Behaviorists Functional Units

Mands - requests (from command~demand), due to a physiological need

Tacts - verbalizing stimulated by an object, reinforced socially

Echoics - imitative, other person's speech is stimulus

Autoclitics - secondary; comment or clarify

Intraverbals - secondary; stimulus is person's own previous verbalizations, account for fluent speech

Classical Conditioning

Involves unconditioned and conditioned stimuli

Operant Conditioning

Learning occuring through rewards and punishments (consequences)

Reinforcement Schedules

Continuous - every performance

Intermittant - after ratios/intervals

Fixed - set time or responses

Variable - unpredictable time or responses

Interval - based on time

Ratio - based on number responses

Compound - combination 2 or more using same reinforcer

Resistance to extinction: variable ratio schedule

Nativist Theory of Language Acquisition

Chomsky

-Also called Innateness; also called Transformational Generative Theory of Grammar; Chomsky called it Minimalist Program

-Child born with LAD (lang acquisition device)

-'Competence' and 'performance' distinctions

-'Surface' and 'deep' (rules) structure

-'Transformations' related surface to deep; involve arranging/rearranging to change sentences

-All human languages share common principles (all have nouns, verbs, etc)

-Critical time period which requires exposure for lg acq (ends around 12yrs); doesn't believe in reinforcement due to LAD

Cognitive Theory of Language Acquisition

Piaget

Also called Cognitive Constructionism

-Children must first actively construct their own understanding of world through interactions with environment

-This cognitive development precedes language

-Ex: child grasps cog concept of size, then words for big, little

-Lg development reflects logic/reasoning development in his 4 stages

Piaget Stages

Cognitive theorist proposed 4 stages overlapping development:

-Sensorimotor (infant)

-Preoperational (toddler, early childhood)

-Concrete operations (elementary)

-Formal operations (adolescent)

Sensorimotor Piaget Stage

0-2 years

-Explore world via sensory and motor contact

-Object permanence and separation anxiety develop

-Egocentric

Sensori motor substage 1

Birth - 2 months

-Reflexive vocal behavior

-Reflexive sensorimotor behavior

Sensorimotor substage 2

2-4 months

-Coordinated hand-eye movements

-Coordinated hand-mouth movements

Sensorimotor substage 3

4-8 months (objects, babble)

-Acts on objects, searches for objects

-Imitates some sounds, babbles

Sensorimotor substage 4

8-12 months (walk, 1st word, search, move)

-Starts walking, uses first word

-Searches for objects from memory

-Begins to realize can cause objects to move

Sensorimotor substage 5

12-18 months

-Object permanence becomes evident

-Walks with confidence

-Imitate other's behavior if person present

-Experiments with object function

Sensorimotor substage 6

18-24 months

-Uses words when referents not present

-Uses thought to solve problems

-Acquires basic cause-effect understanding

-Uses symbolic play

Pre-operational Piaget stage

2-7 years

-Uses symbols (words and images) to represent objects

-Does not reason logically

-Ability to pretend/animates inanimate objects

-Can talk past here and now, into 'past, future, feelings'

Pre-operational preconceptual substage

2-4 years

-Egocentric

-Overextends, underextends word meanings

Pre-operational intuitive substage

4-7 years

-Egocentric

-Concrete thought (5 $100 bills seem more than 1 $500 bill)

-Deals one variable at a time

-Improving classification skills, still inadequate

Concrete operational Piaget substage

7-12 years

-Starts seeing other's point of view

-Begins serial and conversation skills

-Employs logic (add, subtract)

-Effective classification skills

Formal Operational Piaget Stage

12-adult

-Decreasing egocentricity, sees other pts of view

-Think and speak in abstract

-Inductive and deductive reasoning

-If...then statements

-Can use hypotheses

Information Processing Theory of Language Acquisition

Cognitive functioning vs cog structures are needed for lg

Focus on How language is learned

Posit processing steps: organization, memory, transfer, attention, discrimination

2 main areas of deficit in disorders: phonological processing and temporal auditory processing

Study in TAP: capacity and rate

Tx: Auditory discrimination, aud attn, aud mem, aud rate, aud sequencing

Research: working mem and processing speed goals are helpful; and can benefit cog processing skills

Social Interactionist Theory of Language Acquisition

Vygotsky

-Children develop language in context, not in isolation

-Language exists for communication; function not structure is focus

-Lg develops thru interaction with environment and culture which gives meaning to child's world

-Parents' scaffolding contributes to LAD

-Language first, then cognitive thoughts (start at age 2)

Tx: build child's motivation to communicate (comm temptations)

Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition

Tomasello

-Children learn language from their lg experiences and structure emerges from use

-'Constructions' are basic units of grammar

-Emphasis on frequency (token and type) of lg input which increases experience, thereby entrenching the mental representation

-Concept of 'pre-emption': rare, non-frequent lg cause child to not use in common structures

Native Language Magnet Model of Language Acquisition

Kuhl

-To explain why infants discriminate all phonetic differences and then just own language's

-'Perceptual magnet effect' facilitates native production and reduces foreign phonetic abilities

Optimality Theory of Language Acquisition

Prince and Smolensky

-Observed forms of language arise from interaction between conflicting constrainsts and have an input and output between the two

-Constraint: structural requirement to be satisfied or violated by an output and surface form

-Constraint is optimal if it incurs least serious violations

-Surface forms of lg represent resolutions to underlying constraints

-OT has roots in generative grammar

syntactic bootstrapping

Gleitman

Idea that children guess at meaning of novel verbs based on knowing the syntactic frames for verbs (they know -ing means a verb rather than a noun)

(Bootstrapping is a linguistic term for language acquisition)

semantic bootstrapping

Pinker

Idea that children use the meaning of known words to discover the structures of language they are in process of acquiring