Child Language Acquisition

Question 1

What is the Interactionist Perspective?

Answer 1

It emphasises the interactions between innate ability and environmental influences

Question 2

What is operant conditioning?

Answer 2

That learning is defined changes in behaviour as a result of experiences that occur after a response

Question 3

What is a Language Aquisition Device?

Answer 3

That we are all born with an innate language learning capacity

Question 4

What is Tabula Rasa?

Answer 4

Latin for ‘blank state’ - belief that babies are born with undeveloped, fresh brains

Question 5

What is Universal grammar?

Answer 5

That the brain is ‘hard-wired’ to be able to ‘decode’ and use globally similar grammatical processes

Question 6

What are virtuous errors?

Answer 6

Grammatical errors that are understandable and logical through an incorrect assumption being made about grammar rules (I swimmed)

Question 7

What is positive reinforcement?

Answer 7

The positive feedback given to a child which is thought to encourage a similar performance again

Question 12

What is negative reinforcement?

Answer 12

The lack of feedback, correction or negative feedback that might prevent a child from making the same error repeatedly

Question 12

What is Expressive Style?

Answer 12

This style produces many more social formalities and pronouns?

Question 13

What are the two sub groups for social interactionist perspective?

Answer 13

Information processing perspective and Social interaction perspective

Question 14

What is a child nonce form?

Answer 14

A child’s invented and accidental linguistic form

Question 15

What was Vygotsky’s theory?

Answer 15

Suggested the importance of doing for a child to develop and also focused on importance of the caregiver as more knowledgeable than the other.
Through supporting the child through having more knowledge the adult is able to move the child into the zone of proximal development.
This is the area just beyond what the child is able to do already so a child might be given necessary support or scaffolding.

Question 16

How many stages of development did Piaget’s cognitive theory have?

Answer 16

four

Question 17

What was Piaget’s first stage of development?

Answer 17

Sensorimotor stage (0-2) - a child begins to interact with their environment using senses and physical movement. The child is egocentric and an understanding of object permanence appears.

Question 18

What was Piaget’s second stage of development?

Answer 18

Pre-operational stage (2-6/7) - a child learning to speak and developing their imaginative focus. they become capable of representing the world symbolically. they remain egocentric and struggle to understand things from other points of view.

Question 19

What was Piaget’s third stage of development?

Answer 19

Concrete operational stage (6/7-11/12) - a child stops being egocentric at this stage, beginning to understand other points of view, they become more capable of logical thought.

Question 20

What was Piaget’s final stage of development?

Answer 20

Formal operational stage (11-16+) - no longer a problem with logical thought and thinking becomes increasingly abstract.

Question 21

What were strengths of Piaget’s cognitive theory?

Answer 21

The connections between cognitive development and language acquisition

Question 22

What were weaknesses of Piaget’s cognitive theory?

Answer 22

Some aspects of language acquisition are separate from cognitive development