Child Language Theorists

Berko and Brown

• Study showed children rejected an adult's articulation of the word "fish" as "fis" over the correct pronunciation
• The child however would continue to use the pronunciation "fis"
• This indicates that even though a child can't articulate certain words they can still understand them

Noam Chomsky

• Believes learning takes place through an innate brain mechanism
• This mechanism is pre-programmed with the ability to acquire grammatical structures.
• He calls this the Language Acquisition Device

Alan Cruttenden

• Compared adults and children to see if they could predict football results from listening to the scores
• Found adults could successfully predict winners by the intonation placed on the first team
• Children were less accurate

B.F.Skinner

• Key representative of the behaviourist theory
• Proposed all behaviour is a result of the conditioning we have experienced
• Proposed that children learn through imitation
• Introduced the concept of operant conditioning
• This is the idea that either a positive or negative response given by the caregiver can influence the way a child talks on future occasions

Piaget

• Proposed stages through which children progress as their language and thought mature.
• Focused on cognitive development
• Suggested that at the core of a child's understanding is the learning that a child undertakes
• Suggested that children would not develop until stages of cognitive development had been reached.
• Sensory motor stage:
• Learning about the world around them.
• Cognitive development is limited to the world around them
• (0-2 years old)
• Pre-operational stage:
• Children make errors by over-generalisation
• They begin to question things frequently and try to develop an understanding of things
• (2-6/7 years old)
• Concrete operational stage:
• A child stops being egocentric
• Begins to understand the points of view of others.
• More capable of logical thought
• (6/7-11/12 years old)
• Formal operational stage:
• There will no longer be a problem with logical thought
• Thinking becomes increasingly abstract
• (11-16 years old)

Jerome Bruner

• Rejected LAD
• Focused on the importance of children interacting with caregivers
• Suggested the importance of a Language Acquisition Support System
• Suggested the the way caregivers question, encourage, and support the child through scaffolding enables the child to gradually develop their speech

Lev Vygotsky

• Believed that we cannot think something we do not have the words for
• Focused on the importance of a caregiver acting as a more knowledgeable other
• The caregiver can direct the child to move within the zone of proximal development; the area just beyond what a child can do already

Michael Tomasello

• Outlines a model against language being a special instinct
• The ability to learn a language is both primarily social and relies on the same cognitive processes as other forms of learning