The Big 4

The Big 4

1. Behaviourism

   • Children acquire language through imitation
     • B.F.Skinner
       • Imitation
       • Negative Imitation: Violence
       • Critical period (3-18yrs)
       • Motherease: Parents change speech to help child develop
       • Positive Reinforcement: Rewards so repetition occurs
       • Negative Reinforcement: Punishment to stop action
       • Operant Conditioning: Consequence changes their behaviour (Rat touching button to get treat)
   • LIMITATIONS
     • Cant learn all of the structures purely through imitation as rules are over applied
     • Language is often largely unaffected by the treatment they receive or the society this live in
     • David McNeill
       • Children cannot repeat what the adult is saying due to not understanding the structure
     • Brown, Cazden & Bellugi (1969)
       • Parents are more concerned about manners and truthfulness than correction in grammar
     • Bee (1989)
       • Motherease attracts the babies attention but does not help with language acquisition

2. Innateness

   • Children are born with knowledge of language already implanted in their brain
     • Noam Chomsky
       • Linguistic structures are already printed on children's brains
       • Imitation alone is NOT enough
       • Universal Grammar shows that babies can already recognise phonemes when born
         • Have a LAD (Language Acquisition Device) that stores facts such as verb tenses
     • Dan Isaac Slobin
       • Not born with a set of linguistic categories, but do have a set of rules that allow them to process what is being spoken
     • Derek Bickerton
       • Studied Dutch based creoles in Surinam
       • Forced to communicate with each other, despite not having a shared language
       • The children of these speakers learnt this pidgin and formed a creole
     • Sign language
       • This can exist in many dialects and shows we have the innate ability to learn words without hearing
   • LIMITATIONS
     • Tabula Rasa
       • Have a blank slate
       • Empiricsts: No innate knowledge at all about language in the brain
       • Rationalists: Only innate knowledge for specifc aspects such as mathematical concepts, colour and moral concepts
     • Chomsky's theory was only theoretical and not studied on real children
     • Bard & Sachs (1977)
       • Hearing son of deaf parents did not learn language from just listening to the TV, showing that without interaction, it didn't mean anything to him.

3. Cognitive

   • Children must understand a concept before they can express/describe it
     • Jean Piaget
       • Children will reach a certain age where they can understand factors such as size
       • Seriation
       • Object Permanence
         • A child (1 years old) doesn't understand that an object exists if they cannot see it
         • At 18 months, they understand the concept of it being there when hidden
         • 18months: Child's vocab expands, linking object permanence and labelling objects
       • Egotistical language: When a child talks consistently about/to themselves
     • LIMITATIONS
       • Vygotsky
         • A child's speech is social and is applying the tool learnt by others, not egotistical
         • Zone of proximal development
           • Distance between development through independent problem solving and potential development through problem solving with adult guidance

4. Interactionist

   • Children's language can only develop when interacting with their care givers often.
     • Bruner
       • Child directed speech (the way adults amend their language when talking to children) helps them to develop.
         • Scaffolding
         • When this is achieved, the foundations of a conversation are embedded in a child's brain faster
       • Language Acquisition Support System (LASS)
         • 4 PHASE STRUCTURE
           • 1) Gaining attention
           • 2) Query
           • 3) Label
           • 4) Feedback
     • Trevarthen
       • Studied on babies who cannot speak and their parents
         • Turn-taking structure is developed through games and non-verbal communication
     • LIMITATIONS
       • Some children do not receive CDS and development is the same

5. OVERALL LIMITATION

   • Karmiloff & Karmiloff-Smith (2001)
     • Ability of the child has an affect on the child's language development