Language and Communication

• Learning/Empiricist Approach- Skinner, Bruner


  • Learnt through imitation and reinforcement
  • Abilities depend on individual domain-general cognitive abilities and neuronal structures based on general abilities
  • Children construct their world through their own actions and experiment with syntax
• Interactionist Approach - Vygotsky

  • Children biologically prepared - maturation and environment influence development
  • The nervous system shapes the 'universal stages' but there is lots of plasticity involved in language acquisition
  • Developmental Systems Approach - epigenetic interaction, cognitive systems shaped though learning and maturation
  • Children are sensitive to cues, but need social interaction to acquire language
• Gesture

  Children use symbolic gesture ~10-12 months, predicts and preempts spoken language
• Recursion

  The nesting of rules and meaning, not conscious to us, language-taught animals would be unable to keep up
• Zipf's Law of Brevity

  More frequently used words are shorter in length - efficient communication
• Communicative flexibility - ability to learn vocally