Language Development in Children

Early Recognition and Self-Identification in Children

  • Children as young as their first birthdays can recognize their own images in a mirror.
    • Relevant studies:
    • Amsterdam, 1972
    • Priel & deSchonen, 1986
  • By the age of two, children can recognize pictures of themselves and refer to themselves by their names.
    • Notable study: Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979
  • Recognition and self-identification abilities are linked to development in a specific brain region:
    • Junction of the left temporal and parietal lobes
    • Relevant studies: Lewis & Carmody, 2008; Grossman, 2015

Theory of Mind

  • A significant developmental milestone is the understanding that others may hold different perspectives—a capacity known as theory of mind.
    • First defined: Premack & Woodruff, 1978
    • Definition: Ability to reason about what other people believe.
    • Challenge: Recognizing that "other people may not know what I know".
  • Early indications of this understanding in children:
    • Asking questions like "Where's Daddy?" and "What's this?", showing expectations of parental knowledge.
    • Difficulty arises in understanding that sometimes children possess knowledge unknown to others.

False-Belief Task

  • A classic assessment of theory of mind is the false-belief task.
    • Studies: Birch & Bloom, 2007; Wimmer & Perner, 1983
    • Description:
    • A story is presented about a child storing a treat, which is then moved by a third party without the child's knowledge.
    • Researchers ask where the child would look for the treat upon returning.
    • Outcomes:
    • Children who understand that the storyteller’s belief is incorrect pass the task.
    • Children who fail assume that if they know the treat’s location, so does the character in the story.

Syntactic Development

Milestones in Word Combinations

  • The first major milestone in syntactic development is the combining of words into phrases.
    • One-word stage: Children use single words to convey entire thoughts.
    • Example: The word "doggie" can express various meanings such as "There's a doggie!" or "The doggie licked me!"
    • Challenge in interpretation due to the abstract nature of utterances in the one-word stage.
  • By age two, children typically begin combining words into simple two-word phrases, improving comprehensibility.
    • Examples:
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