Section 1: Language and Development

• Typical Language Development: (P1)

  
  

  6 Months

  • Vocalization with intonation, or variation in pitch of voice
  • Responds to name
  • Responds to human voices without visual cues by turning head and eyes
  • Responds appropriately to friendly and angry tones

  12 Months

  • Uses one or more words with meaning (this may be a fragment of a word)
  • Understands simple instructions, especially if vocal or physical cues are given
  • Practices inflection
  • Is aware of the social value of speech
• Typical Language Development: (P2)

  
  

  18 Months

  • Has vocab of approximately 5-20 words
  • Vocab made up chiefly or mostly of nouns
  • Some echolalia (or process when repeating a word or phrase over and over)
  • Much jargon with emotional content
  • Is able to follow simple commands
• Typical Language Development: (P3)

  
  

  24 Months

  • Can use at least 2 prepositions like "in, on, under"
  • Combines words into short sentence, largely noun-verb combos and has (mean) length of 12 words
  • Approximately 66% of what child says in intelligible
  • Vocab about 150-300 words
  • Rhythm, fluency and volume, pitch of voice often poorly established
  • Can use 2 pronouns correctly: "I, me, you," but "me and I" often confused
  • "My and mine" begins to emerge
  • Responds to commands better
• Critical Period Hypothesis: belief that the ability to acquire language peaks during early childhood through adolescence, and declines in adults

  • Chomsky and other linguists have proposed a “language acquisition device,” an inborn and evolved faculty of the human mind that permits is to acquire language when exposed to it

  Is it possible that the language acquisition faculty in humans either stops functioning or becomes less accessible with age?

  • Children encounter for the first 6 years of their life about 81,000 words “they do not memorize”
• Different beliefs about Cognitive Process of Acquiring Knowledge:

  
  

  *Cognition: relates to mental process involved in knowing, learning, and comprehension

  1. Vygotsky: language and dialogue shape thought and influences learning
  2. Piaget: stages in life from egocentric to maturity that allow for language and development
• Concepts Lev Vygotsky highlighted in his theory of learning and development:

  • Zone of Proximal Development: space between what a learner can do without assistance and with guidance from adults or capable peers
  • Validates student’s prior knowledge
  • Understands importance of aid
  • Language and Thought: both can be linked, known as verbal though
  • Egocentric speech is a means to figure out answers; children use it because believe they are understood and heard
  • Scaffolding: the breaking down of information or of parts of new skill into pieces that are digestible for learners, like w/ visual aids
• Concepts Jean Piaget used in theory of language and development:

  • Accommodation - the way in which people adjust their speech and communication style in face-to-face or other types of communication; influenced by gender, culture, ethnicity, native language, age, or even social and occupational status
  • Classification
  • hypothetical-deductive reasoning: ability to think scientifically through generating predictions or hypothesis to answer questions about the world
• Concepts Jean Piaget used in theory of language and development:

  • Language as an egocentric process
  • Mostly concerned with:
  • Assimilation - add new info. to existing knowledge and can reinterpret new ideas and experiences to fit it in w/ previous knowledge
  • Schema - the way a person puts together the idea of something in their own mind and can be related