child language Flashcards
(27 cards)
name the 4 theories
behaviourism
nativism
social interaction
cognitivism
Behaviourism (who)
B F Skinner
Behaviourism (what is it)
children learn language by repetition and reinforcement - they imitate their parents
conditioning
occurs through interaction with environment
- our responses to environment stimuli shape our actions
Reinforcement
positive
- rewarding them with praise, cheering
- makes bond stronger by following with a pleasant reaction
negative
- saying no, or correcting them
- makes bond stronger by taking away the negative stimulus
Repetition
if the action gains a favourable response, then that action is reinforced and will repeat it
John B Watson
coined the term behaviourism in 1912
problems with behaviourism
- children make mistakes with grammar that they cannot have heard from adults
- children resist correction - revoke and refute behaviourism
- parents tend not to correct grammatical mistakes but do correct factual errors
- all children seem to follow the same stages of language development
nativism (who)
Noam Chomsky
nativism (what)
- the ability to use language is innate for all humans
- brain is not a blank state
- we have a language acquisition device (LAD)
- children are pre- wired with universal grammar
poverty of stimulus
nativism
a child is not exposed to carefully planned examples of language instead of a cacophory of sounds
virtuous error
nativism
own internal logic
most common - past tenses
WUG TEST
jean berko
- invited some fictional words
- able to test if they had actually learnt a rule
- 80-90% could correctly pluralize wug
children do more than simply copying language - they learn rules and then develop language independently - refutes and revokes behaviourism
Eric lenneberg
nativism
language has a critical period
- around puberty
criticism of nativism
underplaying the role of input
LAD- interrupts what is heard and derives rule from it
Social interaction (who)
Jerome Bruner
social interaction (what)
nature nurture debate
- there is an innate ability - but natural talent is assisted by carefully structured input from significant people
LASS
language acquisition support system
- helps acquire language e.g. pronunciation
e. g. tv, books, toys
child directed speech
how a significant person adapts their speech in interaction with a child
e.g. high pitch, embedded in the here and now, shorter sentences, use of special words
Cognitivism (who)
Piaget - interested in the childs understanding of concepts, such as size and volume
vygotsky- followed on from piagets work, developing theories about the importance of the wider social environment on a childs cognitive and language development
differences between Piaget and vygostky
Piaget - child needs to develop indepentdently (4 stages)
vygotsky- cannot learn without social context (groups) (MKO)
more knowledgable other
the significant person in a childs life which pushes them through the zone of proximal development
zone of proximal development
how far a child can go on his/her own
pianist cognitive theory (2 stages)
preoperational stage (complex abstract thought is still difficult) concrete operational stage (awareness increased)
