Spoken Child Acquisition Theories/Theorists

Critical Period Theory:

He believed that social interaction and exposure to language was essential in order for a child to gain full mastery of a language.

He also stated that the human brain is designes to acquire language at a certian time, called the critical period. This means that there is a specific time that a child should be acquiring language, and if they do not acquire it by the end of the critical period, they will find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to acquire language.

Found that the largest category was naming wrods, with around 60% of a child's frist words being nouns

Argues that nouns outnumber verbs 5:1

Believed that language was just another form of learned behaviour

Suggest that children learn through positive and negative reinforcement

Called children's brains a 'blank slate'

- Ready for them to learn language through interaction

- Caregivers imprint on their children

Intoduced the idea is innateness (the capacity and apparatus for learning language are already there when born)

Suggested that we are born with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which control the development of language

- Allows the children to assemble a set of rules about the language as they hear it beging used around them

- Could explain how children can say grammatically complex phrases without having heard them before

(Similar to Chomsky)

Argues that humans are born with innate ability and capacity for language

He sees language as an instinct, which has evolved in humans

Asserts that language must do two things:

- Convey a message to an audience

- Negotiate the social relationship between speaker and audience

Put forward the idea that the interactions between child and carer are crucial to language development, and help children develop importatn abilities, such as turn-taking

Proposed the existence of the Language Acquisition Support System (LASS), which is the support for language learning provided by parents

He argues that parents and caregivers do more than provide models for imitation - e.g. correct incorrect utterances, make sure the child understands what is being said...

Suggested that a child's language acquisition is a part of a child's wider development, so language comes with understanding

A child cannot linguistically articulate concepts they do not understand

Used pseudo-words (fake/made up words), such as 'wug', to ensure that the child has never been exposed to the word previously

The linguist showed children an image of an imaginary creature, and told them the creature was called a 'Wug'

They were then showed an image of two Wugs, saying, "Now there is another. So there are two ____", the which the children replied 'Wugs'.

Though they had never come acorss a Wug before, they knew the rule that to pluralise a noun, you have to add an '-s'. This is never taught to them, but somehow they learn it.

This study supports Chomsky's LAD theory

Satisfying physical, emotional and social needs...

Instrumental = 'I want' function

Language is used to satisfy material needs, e.g. 'Gimme sweeties'

Regulatory = 'Do as I tell you' function

Language is used to control others, e.g. 'Wash hands'

Interactional = 'Me and you' function

Language is used to maintain relationships and engage in conversations, e.g. 'Love Mummy'

Personal = 'Here I come' function

Language is used to seek feelings, opinions and individual identity, e.g. 'Jimmy good boy'

Helping the child grow accustomed to their environment...

Heuristic = 'Tell me why' function

Language is useed to seek information, explore ideas and ask questions, e.g. 'Why the bus stop here?'

Imaginative = 'Let's pretend' function

Language is used creatively to tell stories, write poetry, play games and inhabit an imaginary world, e.g. riddles and rhymes

Representational = 'I've got something to tell you' function

Language is used to convey information, facts and ideas, e.g. 'We learnt to dance today'

Stage 1: The child uses their own name, e.g. "Tom play"

Stage 2: The child recognises the I / me pronouns and thatthese are useful in different places within the sentence, e.g. "I play toy" / "Me do that"

Stage 3: The child uses them according to whether they are in the subject/object position within a sentence, e.g. "I play with the toy" / "Give it to me"

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Pronoun = A word that can replace a a noun

They can be difficult to use accurately, as they express many things...

• Person
• Number
• Gender
• Possession

Negative words e.g. no, not ...

Stage 1: Place a negative word at the beginning of the utterance, e.g. "No like that"

Stage 2: The negative word moves within the body of theutterance, e.g. "Me not going"

Stage 3: Child will master the capability to attach negatives to auxillaryverbs of copula verbs 'to be', e.g. "I'm not happy"

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Copula use:A verb that joins a subject to an adjective or noun complement, e.g. "I am happy", joins the subject (I) to the adjective (happy), which can include not just the verb 'to be' but also verbs like 'to look', 'feel' or 'seem' (e.g. 'She seems distressed')

Initiation - Response - Feedback

Discourse model for acquiring language

Imaginative Play:

When playing, children have to work collaborativelt and they learn from each other, in a way that does not happen in interactions with adults

Imaginative play also provides children with the opportunity to experiment with language in unfamiliar ways

Aims...

• Attract & hold child's attention
• Help break down language into understandable chunks
• Make the conversation predictable

Features...

• Repetition of lexis
• Lots of questions - including tage questions, and questions the speaker already knows the answer to
• Expansion
• Recasting - caregiver puts child's words into another utterance (e.g. "I runned"  to "You ran?"
• Mitigated imperatives - a command disguised as a question, e.g. "shall we get this homework done?"

The 'fis' phenomenon

Berko and Brown described how a child referred to his plastic fish as a ‘fis’. When the observer responded, ‘Is this your fis?’ the child said ‘No – mu fis’. He continued to reject the adult’s mimicry of his speech until he was asked, ‘is this your fish?’ he then replied ‘yes, my fis’.

When a child says something incorrectly, it doesn’t always mean they wrong, it just means they can't pronounce the phoneme