Speech

• Cruttenden (1974) NATURE 


  • tested adults vs children to predict football scores
  • can’t be predicted, isolates intonation (holophrastic stage - intonation)
  • adults successful, children up to 7 struggled
  • suggests language is innate, they can use it but can’t understand it - so they aren’t copying
• Bortfield et al (2005) NATURE


  babies turn their heads towards the sound of their own name and appear to listen longer.

  • holophrastic stage - understanding
  • word recognition evident by age 1
• Behaviourism -Skinner (1957) NURTURE

  • we learn through imitation via socialisation.
  • ‘operant conditioning‘ - learning through reward and punishment, eg. if a child asks for a drink and she gets the drink, it reinforces her to use the word in future (eg. Pavlov’s dogs)
  • positive reinforcement

  cons - parents can’t correct all grammar due to a lack of knowledge
• Cons of behaviourism

  • hard to determine if society influences grammar
  • tested on animals, can’t apply to humans
• Genie NURTURE

  • victim of neglect and social isolation
  • followed some normal patterns of acquiring language, never fully learnt language (potential learning disability)
• Bard and Sachs (1977) - Jim‘s deaf parents NATURE

  • hearing son, deaf parents
  • could not fully learn speech through TV
  • did not imitate parents
• Malaya NURTURE

  • imitated dog behaviour
  • did not learn speech due to a lack of parental nurture
  • nurture of dogs, imitated their behaviour
• Nativism - Chomsky (1965) NATURE

  • children’s brains contain LAD (language acquisition device) which holds the grammatical universals.
  • children pick up grammar and syntax without formal teaching, LAD is innate.
  • regardless of who teaches you language, all children make the same mistakes when learning.
  • virtuous errors, adults don’t make these mistakes thus children don’t learn from imitation - eg. ‘wented’
• Aitchison (1987)


  3 stages of acquiring vocabulary

  1. labelling, link words to objects
  2. packaging, explore labels
  3. network-building, understand similarities and differences
• The Wug Test (1958) - Berko NATURE


  made up creature ‘wug’ can’t be pluralised by children, can’t copy as unknown - no “metalinguistic awareness“, children don’t know that they aren’t applying language
• Berko and Brown - Fis phenomenon NATURE


  children can understand phonetic distinction but are unable to produce it correctly, when asked they can understand it but use their own version when applying.
• Social Interactionism Theory NURTURE


  Kuhl (2004) -

  • presented 9 month old American babies with Mandarin Chinese
  • 1/2 used in-person tutor, 1/2 used a televised tutor
  • all children began with the same ability
  • those with real life tutor were more likely to recognise speech sounds than those exposed to the televised tutor
• Vygotsky - Social Interactionism NURTURE 


  children learn through social interaction, eg. Genie

  • ‘scaffolding‘ - as a child is seems to understand what they are being taught by parental guidance, support is reduced over time and the child can continue on their own.
  • there is a social need for an MKO to guide us
• Child directed speech NURTURE

  • intonation
  • simplified vocabulary
  • repetition
• Piaget 


  cognitive learning through discovery learning
• Cruttenden (1979) NATURE


  children get it right, wrong, right, eg. “feet, foot, feet”

  links to Nativism
• Lenneberg (1967)

  • critical period for language acquisition (phonemic contraction) - if you don't use your synapses (by age 13) you lose them, eg. Genie
  • linguistic universals - children globally go through similar stages of language development
• Bruner - Interactionism


  humans learn through their social environment (LASS), children with poor linguistic environment tend to start school with inferior language skills
• Zone of Proximal Development - Vygotsky

  • children learn language by interaction with an MKO, who can provide them with an intellectual scaffold
  • may explain why children don't respond to or repeat corrections
  • doesn't explain why some children learn at a rapid pace
  • doesn't explain why there aren't huge differences between children from different language backgrounds
  • internal mediators are crucial, eg. inner speech, imagination, and pretend play
• Piaget - Cognitive Theory

  • a child can't understand a word until they understand the concept, eg. object permanence, time, and sizes
  • interaction with peers is imperative, eg. play groups
• Mehler (1988)


  French newborns can distinguish French phonemes from those found in other languages
• DeCasper and Spence (1980)

  the child memorises the mother's voice whilst in the womb
• Jenkins and Astington (1996)

  • children with siblings develop a theory of mind at a faster pace
  • pretend play with siblings is thought to make high demands for imaginative cooperation, promoting psychological understanding
• Nelson (1973)

  children whose mothers corrected them during the holophrastic stage acquired language more slowly
• Vygotsky (1978) - Zone of Proximal Development

  • social interaction is crucial
  • learning happens most effectively when tasks are within the learner's ZPD, challenging but achievable with the right support
• Bloom (1973)

  'mummy sock', context needed for MKO to understand
• Nelson (1973)

  children's first words are usually nouns, they identify objects that they can see
• Bancroft (1996) - 'peek-a-boo'

  • object permanence
  • emotional regulation
  • separation and reunion
  • cognitive development
• Clarke-Stewart (1973)


  mothers who talk more enable their children to have a larger vocabulary
• Murray (1988)

  children whose mothers have post-natal depression develop slower, due to a lack of social interaction
• Lenneberg (1967)

  the critical period is from birth to age 12, when the brain is the most flexible and capable of learning - after this time it becomes less possible to learn language, eg. Genie
• Petito and Holowka (2002)


  babbling stems from the right-hand-side of the mouth which means babbling is not just motor noise, but linguistically driven
• Halliday's 7 functions of language (1975)

  1. instrumental, to express needs
  2. regulatory, to control the behaviour of others
  3. interactional, to form relationships
  4. personal, to express emotions
  5. heuristic, to gain knowledge
  6. imaginative, to pretend
  7. representational, to convey information
• Piaget (1936) - schemas

  • schemas = ‘building blocks’, children learn their own reality
  • eg. see a photo of a cat, are able to label it as a cat
  • they must understand the concept to use it, eg. height
  • schemas are built into our brain structure
• Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive ability

  1. sensorimotor (0-2yrs), learn object permanence
  2. pre-operational (2-7yrs), symbolic thought/imagination
  3. concrete operational (7-11yrs), logical thought
  4. formal operational (12+yrs), scientific reasoning/abstract thinking
• Piaget - 4 stages of cognitive ability

  • no stage can be missed
  • development rate varies
  • some never make it to the final stage
• Dasen (1994) - Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive ability

  1/3 adult never make it to the final stage
• Animism

  children think everything is alive, including inanimate objects, the objects have the same emotions as them (egocentric)
• Katamba (1996)

  there is little connection between the frequency in which inflections are used by parents and the order in which children acquire them, not imitation
• Brown’s order of inflections (1973)

  1. ‘-ing‘
  2. preposition ‘on’
  3. preposition ‘in‘
  4. plural ‘-s’
  5. irregular past tense
  6. possessive ‘s’
  7. uncontractible ‘be’
  8. articles ‘a’ and ‘the’
  9. past tense ‘-ed’
  10. third person ‘-s’
  11. irregular third person
  12. uncontractible auxiliary
  13. contractible ‘be’
  14. contractible auxiliary ‘be’

  children learn in the same order