Question 12

Question 12

1. First half of 20th Century researchers identified language milestones that apply to children around the globe.

2. The regularity and rapidity of these suggested a process largely governed by maturation, inspiring the NATIVIST perspective.

3. In recent years new evidence has led to the INTERACTIONIST perspective, which emphasises the join roles of children's predispositions and communicative experiences in language acquisition.

4. NATIVIST PERSPECTIVE

   • Noam Chomsky (1957) proposed theory that regards language as a uniquely human accomplishment etched into the structure of the brain.
   • Grammar: Chomsky reasoned that the rules for sentence organisation too complex to be taught directly or be discovered by even a cognitively sophisticated young child.
   • All children have LAD: LANGUAGE ACQUISITION DEVICE: An innate system that permits them, once they have acquired sufficient vocabulary...
     • combine words into grammatically consistent, novel utterances and
     • to understand the meaning of sentences they hear.
   • Within the LAD is a UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
     • A built in storehouse of rules common to all human languages.
   • Young children use this knowledge to decipher grammatical categories and relationships in any language they are exposed to.
   • Because LAD is specifically suited for language processing, children master the structure of language spontaneously with only limited language exposure.
   • Thus the LAD ensures that language will be acquired early and swiftly despite it's complexity.
   • SUPPORTED BY
     • 1. Research: Deaf children have been known to invent their own language despite minimal or inconsistent input.
     • 2. Animals
       • Some animals with extensive training can acquire a vocab based in symbols and can produce and respond to short novel sentences (less consistently than a preschool child.)
       • But no evidence exists that even the brightest animals can comprehend and produce sentences that are both complex and novel.
       • ie. language acquisition uniquely human.
     • 3. Language areas in the Brain
       • Broca's area: left frontal lobe, supports grammatical processing and language production.
       • Wernicke's area: left temporal lobe, plays a role in comprehending word meaning.
       • If this region is injured in first few years, other regions take over language functions.
       • When it is relocated to right hemisphere, it is localised in roughly same regions that typically support language in left hemisphere.
       • Suggests those regions uniquely primed for language processing.
     • 4. Sensitive Period for Lang Development
       • Evidence for sensitive period would support nativist theory that lang development has unique biological properties.
       • Research: Those who learned American Sign Language in adolescence or adulthood never became as proficient at any aspect of language as those who learned in childhood.
       • The more committed the brain is to native language patterns, better children's mastery of their native language and less effective at acquiring foreign languages.
   • LIMITATIONS
     • 1. Researchers have had difficulty specifying Chomsky's universal grammar.
     • Critics: one set of rules cannot account for the multiplicity of grammatical forms in 5000-8000 languages.
     • 2. Idea that grammatical knowledge as innately determined does not fit with certain observations of lang development.
     • In fact complete mastery of some forms (passive voice for example) not achieved until well until middle childhood.
     • Suggests more experimentation and learning are involved than C assumed.
     • 3. Lacks comprehensiveness
       • Doesn't explain how children weave statements together into connected discourse and sustain meaningful conversations.
     • 4. Does not regard children's cognitive capacities as important
       • But cognitive development is involved in children's early vocab growth, and studies of those with intellectual impairment show cognitive competence influences grammatical mastery.

5. INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE

   • Emphasise the interactions between inner capacities and environmental influences.
   • INFORMATION PROCESSING THEORIES
     • Most influential info-processing accounts derived from research with connectionist, or artificial neural network models.
     • ie. they design computer systems to simulate the multilayered networks of neural connections in the brain and program them with basic learning procedures.
     • Then exposed to various types of language input and given feedback about accuracy of responses. Correct response: connections strengthen. Wrong: they weaken.
     • Tests with certain language sounds, words and basic grammatical forms show these networks capture children's early errors and gradually detect adult linguistic patterns.
     • With further experience the network modified and combined rules to arrive at adult usage.
     • NB: These neural networks not biased to learn language.
       • Their designers rather assume that children make sense of their complex language environments by applying powerful, analytic, cognitive capacities of a general kind rather than capacities specifically tuned to language.
     • Other theorists blend nativist with info-processing proposal that the human brain is extraordinarily skilled at detecting patterns.
       • Infants are amazing statistical analysers of the sound stream.
       • Using this statistical learning capacity infants identify basic language patterns by applying same strategies they use to make sense of their non-linguistic experiences.
     • SUPPORT
       • Proponents draw on biological evidence, pointing out that regions of the brain housing language also govern other similar perceptual, motor, and cognitive abilities.
       • e.g. studies reveal that damage to Wernicke's area results in difficulty comprehending both language and other patterned stimuli, e.g. music, series of moving lights showing patterns.
     • LIMITATIONS
       • Have tested their ideas mostly with simplified language stimuli to artificial neural networks and to children in laboratories.
       • In many instances they cannot be certain that the learning strategies identified generalise to children's language acquisition in everyday social contexts.
       • Other interactionist theorists believe that children's social skills and language experiences are centrally involved in language development.
   • One type applies information-processing perspective, a second type emphasises social interaction.
   • SOCIAL INTERACTIONIST (SI) THEORIES
     • 1. A native capacity, 2. a strong desire to understand others and to be understood by them and 3. a rich language environment combine to help children discover the functions and regularities of language.
     • An active child, well-endowed for making sense of language, strives to communicate.
     • In doing so she/he cues her caregivers to provide appropriate language experiences, which in turn help her relate the content and structure of language to its social meanings.
     • SUPPORT
       • There is much research support for this central premise.
       • That children's social competencies and language greatly affect language development.
       • In reality, native endowment, cognitive-processing strategies, and social experience may operate in different balances with respect to each component of language.
     • LIMITATIONS
       • Among SI, disagreement continues over whether children make sense of their complex language environments by applying general cognitive capacities or capacities specially tuned to language.
       • Today we still know much more about the course of language development than about precisely how it takes place.