Language Learning in Early Childhood

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Language Learning in Early Childhood

• Explaining first language acquisition

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Overview

• The behaviourist perspective
• The innatist perspective
• The critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)
• Interactionist/developmental perspective

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• The behaviourist perspective

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The behaviourist perspective ? Say what I say

• 1940s and 1950s Behaviourism imitating and
  practising  ? importance to the environment

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The behaviourist perspective ? Say what I say

• imitation and practice as the primary processes
  in language  development
• Imitation
• Practise
• Children imitate selectively

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The behaviourist perspective ? Say what I say

• Patterns in language
• Unfamiliar formulas
• Question formation
• Order of events

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• The innatist perspective

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The innatist perspective

• Noam Chomsky
• Languages are innate
• Children are biologically programmed for language
• ?They do not have to be taught

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Difference to behaviorist perspective

• Children know more about structure of language
  than they could be expected to learn
• Their minds are not blank slates to be filled
• BUT innate ability to discover underlying rules
  of language system

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Universal Grammar ( UG)

• Human brain contains a limited set of rules for
  organizing language
• Assumption that all languages have a common
  structural basis
• No wrong hypothesis of how a language system
  might work
• Only have to learn how language makes use of the
  UG

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Example

• John saw himself.
• Himself saw John.
• Looking after himself bores John.
• Could not be learned simply by imitating and
  practicing sentences
• There must be an innate mechanism!

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• The Critical Period Hypothesis

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The critical period hypothesis

• Particular time (critical period) to learn
  certain knowledge or skills
• Genetically programmed
• Prove in history
• Victor
• Genie

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CPH Victor

• 1799 12 year old boy found in the woods of
  France ? feral child
• Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard (doctor) worked with him
  for 5 years
• Progress in most areas but not in language

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CPH Genie

• 13 year old girl from California
• Isolated, neglected and abused by her parents
• Was tied to a chair for 11 years and deprived
  from language
• 1977 started to be educated and cared for
• Social, cognitive progress but not in language

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The critical period hypothesis

• Still not enough prove for CPH
• Research with deaf children who are born to
  hearing parents ? late access to language
• 5 10 of deaf children are born to deaf parents
• 1990 Elissa Newports research with deaf
  children

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CPH Elissa Newports research

• ASL (sign language) makes use of grammatical
  markers
• Comparison of three groups
• Native signers (children who learned ASL from
  birth)
• Early learners (learned ASL between 4 and 6 years
  of age)
• Late learners (learned ASL after the age of 12)
  

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CPH Newports results

• No difference in some aspects of their use of ASL
  BUT
• Native signers were more consistent with
  grammatical markers than early learners
• Early learners were more consistent with
  grammatical markers than late learners
• Prove for CPH whether language is oral or
  gestural

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• Interactionist/developmental perspective

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Interactionist/ developmental perspectives
Overview

• learning from inside and out
• ? innate learning ability and interaction
  with environment
• powerful learning mechanism in the
• brain
• learning from experience
• connection between cognitive development and
  language acquisition

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Jean Piaget

• development of childrens cognitive
  understanding
• object permanence
• stability of quantities
• logical inferencing
• language symbol system developing in childhood
  and expressing childrens knowledge

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Lev Vygotsky

• language develops mainly from social interaction
• zone of proximal development ? high level of
  knowledge and performance
• language thought ? internalized speech speech
  ? results from social interaction

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The importance of interaction

• direct access to language
• repetitions and paraphrases of adults
• feeling of being understood through adults
  response

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Connectionism

• language learning learning in general
• language acquisition association of words and
  phrases with objects and situations

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Question

• What do you think about these different
  theories? Do they all work together or is there
  only one that is right?

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• Thank you for your attention!