Developmental psychology

Symbolic communication - a system of symbols which we use to communicate.

Symbols stand for sounds, and we combine those sounds to make words.

   - Rule-governed

   - Convetional, arbitrary

Social communication

Intellect - use languag as part of our memory

Doesn't have to be spoken.

   - Written

   - Sign language

- Phonology: perception and production of sounds used in language.

- Phonemes: smallest unit of sound

- Speech is a continuous stream of phonemes

- Vocal apparatus can produce 100s of phonemes - English language has only 44 phonemes.

    - Rules govern combination (Chomsky & Halle, 1968)

           - Can't produce

           - Aren't produced (language specific)

- Graphemes = smallest unit of text that makes a phoneme

       - Letter(s) corresponds to phonemes

       - But, not 1-to-1

- Rules for combination

       - Corresponding to phonology

       - Specifically orthographic rules

                  -e.g. adding 'E' - elongates a word (bath-e)

- Morphemes = smallest meaning unit

- Have to combine them otherwise our language would not make sense

- Structure and forms of a word can take when put together

- Words

    - Multiple meaning

- Phrases and sentencing

    - Grammar and syntax - subject-verb-object

- Considers communicative function

- We pragmatically adapt our language depending on who we are talking to

- Adjusting language for context

    - Speech, writing - e.g. txt msgs via academic essays

- Social conventions

    - e.g. turn-taking - learn this very early on

    - elaboration

- Perspective talking

- Intonation and prosody

Prelinguistic: the new born

New born

- Reflexive vocalisations

1 months

- Discriminate virtually all phoneme

- Show a preference for their own language

- Different cries

2-3 months

- Coo, smile, laugh

Prelinguistic: the first year

4-6 months

- Babbling, echolalia

- Cross-culturally similar sounds and age

- Pragmatics - joint attention; turn-taking (adut burden)

6-9 months

- Cononical babbling

- Reduplicated babbling

Prelinguistic: the first year

9-12 months

- Modulated babbling

- Infants begins taking active role (Reddy, 1999)

    - Dyadic -> triadic interaction

- Meaningful gesture

     - Pointing from 8 months

- Comprehension of simple instructions

First words: 1-2 years

- Comprehension precedes production

- Phonologically consists forms

- First conventional word at around 1 year

    - Predictable semantic categories (Dromi, 1999; Nelson, 1981)

- Vocabulary development

    - Initially very slow: 1-2 words per months

    - 18-24 months: 10-20 words a week

    - 6 years voabulary = 15,000 words

          - Grammatical insight - realise everything has a different word so there is a surge in their vocabulary.

Sentences: 2+ years

Grammar:

- Holophrases: 12-18 months (tomosello, 1995)

- 2 word utterances: 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 years (Bloom, 1998)

- 3 word utterances: 2-3 years

- Logical errors - knowledge of grammar - over-regulation e.g. "deers"

- Playing with language - e.g. rhyming.

- 4-5 years: most grammatical constructions

Spoken language - nature/nurture debate

Nativists .g. Chomsky (1957); Pinker (1994)

- Only human, virtually all humans

- Cross-cultural similarities; universal grammar

- Innate capacity; explicit teaching unneccessary

- "Language acquisition device"

Behaviour e.g. Skinner (1957)

- Different language, dialects, accent

- Imitation and reinforcement

Nativists vs behaviourist

Nativist

- Innate desire to communicate

- For = universal properties of language

- Agaisnt = understates complexity

Behaviourist

- Learned behaviour

- For = environmental effects evidenc

- Agaisnt = understates development achievement.

So... interactionalist approach

Literacy development

Literacy: abiliy to read and write

Written language

- Develops after spoken

- Not all humans acquire (easily)

- Requires explicit education

- Development = matching written to spoken.

Literacy development: stage models (e.g. Frith, 1985; Ehri, 1995)

Logographic stage (pre-school)

- Salient visual cues - e.g. smaller misread as yellow (Seymour & Elder, 1986)

- Expect large objects to have long spellings

- Innefficient

Alphanetic stage (approx 5+ years)

- Use phoneme-grapheme corresponds

- Convert to known spoken words

- Dependent on knowledge of phonology

- Most eventually acuire additional strategies

Literacy development: stage models

Orthographic stage (approx 8+ years)

- Orthographic knowledge

- Morphologically knowledge

- Vocabulary development directly from text

However, strict stage models of literacy largely discredited

Literacy development: Piaget

Sensori-motor stage: birth - 2 years

- No limited language skills

- Sensory exploration of world

Pre-operational stage - 2 - 7/8 years

- Rapid language development

- Children begin to categorise with words

Concrete operational stage - 7/8 - 11/12 years

- Use concrete objects to think about abstract concepts

Formal operational - 11/12 years - adult

- Use language in an abstract way

Literacy development: Holdaway

Learning to read is a natural development phase linked to children's natural development of oral language skills.

Proposed 4 key concepts:

1) Observation: opportunity to observe literacy behaviours from others

2) Collaboration - interact with others who encoruage and help reading process

3) Practice - opportunity to practice alone in order to self-evaluate and increase skills independently.

4) Performance - share new reading skills with those who support them.

- Bi-directional relationship - need spoken language to read and need to be able to speak language.

- Exposure to different languag forms

- Metalinguistic development

     - Language as an object of thought

Language is complex

Spken languge develops rapidly from young age

- Innate desire to communicate

- Rich linguistic environment required

Literacy develops more slowly and is more difficult to acuire

- Requires explicit education

Bi-directional relationship between written and spoken language.