The child's first words are usually nouns, such as 'dada', 'mama', or 'doggie'.
Language acquisition involves learning grammar rules, vocabulary, and syntax (the way words are put together).
Chomsky's theory of Nativism
Believes in innateness but children still need support from caregivers to make the natural ability happen.
We are all born with a LanguageAcquisitionDevice (LAD)
Children do not solely depend on external factors for the human brain to acquire grammatical categories and syntactic rules.
Bruner's Theory of Social Interaction
We need a Language Acquisition Support System (LASS) to develop language
The role of the caregiver is vital and crucial
Children need to explore and make mistakes
Piaget's Theory of Cognitivism
0-2= Sensory motor-egocentricity
2-7= pre-operational- egocentricity and imaginative
Cognitivism= understanding the concept before being able to form the language, similar to Berko and Brown, comprehension proceeds competency.
Believes in the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
Skinner's Theory of Behaviourism
His theory emphasises the role of reinforcement through punishment and reward to shape behaviour
Positive and Negative reinforcement has a big impact on development
Operant Conditioning
Children will imitate or copy to learn
Vygotsky's Theory of Social Development
Learning is crucially a social process as opposed to an independent journey.
Coined the term Zone of Proximal Development which is the gap between what a child can learn independently and what they can learn with the help of a More Knowledgeable Other.
