Behaviourist Theory
Skinner
‘behaviour is shaped and maintained by its consequences’
- Skinner claimed that children acquire language by imitating the speech of others and being rewarded for it
- called ‘operant conditioning’
- positive re-enforcement: desired response
- negative re-enforcement: undesired response or no response at all
- children do acquire some features (pragmatics, pronunciation, politeness)
Chomsky criticism
of Skinner’s behaviourism
- claimed that the language used by adults, when talking to children, was ‘impoverished’
- children would never learn to be adult speakers if they could only copy what adults said to them
Braine’s ‘Other one spoon’ example
- sometimes children cannot be corrected until they have reached the right stage of linguistic development
- the child continued to say ‘other one spoon’, despite his father correcting him to say ‘other spoon’
McNeil’s ‘Nobody Don’t Like Me’ example
- sometimes children cannot be corrected until they have reached the right stage of linguistic development
- the child continues to use non-standard multiple negation despite being corrected to ‘nobody likes me’ with the third person singular present tense ‘s’ inflection
The Fis Phenomenon
Berko and Brown
- sometimes children cannot be corrected until they have reached the right stage of linguistic development
- the child understands that the ‘fish’ sound should be /ʃ/ but since this is a middle 8 sound, the child has not acquired this sound yet
Nativism
Noam Chomsky
- chomsky believed that we were biologically predisposed to learn language due to the LAD
- the LAD is designed to extract the rules of grammar from overheard speech
- all languages share the same deep structure and the knowledge of this universal grammar is in your LAD (eg. tenses, plurals)
Vocal tract
Slobin
- can be used to support Chomsky
-Slobin claims human anatomy is specifically adapted for speech - we have evolved a vocal tract which allows the precise articulation and replication of a wide repertoire of vocal sounds
- some areas of the brain are also closely connected to language e.g. Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area
Genie
Jean Butler
- genie was deprived of contact until 11 years of age
- she was then rescued, and received a lot of input
- while she rapidly progressed with learning specific lexical terms, she never learnt to speak beyond everyday vocabulary
- rejects the idea that language is an inatability
Critical period
Eric Lenneberg
- can be used with Genie
- the ‘critical period’ is the age you must be exposed to language and social interaction or you will be unable to learn it
- he suggested this was up to the age of 5, we now believe that this is 8
Piaget’s Cognitivist Theory
Object permanence
- believed that language acquisition was just a part of wider cognitive development
- cognitive development comes in predictable stages
e.g. ‘object permanence’
Piaget’s Cognitivism
classification - children learn to classify objects and actions e.g. some things are to eat, some are to play
seriation - children learn that things come in a series or an order; stories have a start and end, dogs come in a variety of sizes
object permanence - when children learn that objects exist even when they are non-present, which means they can refer to them in conversation
the case against Piaget’s Cognitivism
- many people with language difficulties do not have poor language development
- Piaget’s work only considers the role of language in conveying thoughts, neglects the social function that it is used to establish and maintain relationships
Spotting Piaget
- children talking about non-present or imaginary objects
- children talking to themselves or playing in a way that suggests they are trying to help themselves make sense of something (suggests a link between cognition and language)
- children failing to use or understand language because they haven’t yet grasped the concept expressed by the language e.g. time for tenses
Bruner’s Input Theory
claimed that child-directed language is specifically designed to help children learn
adults provide ‘quality input’
“children learn language initially…to get what they want”
- child-directed language works as a LASS, aiding the LAD extract grammatical rules from overheard speech
Examples of Bruner’s Input Theory
1) parents speak slowly to children
2) parents re-explain children’s speech
3) parents introduce new words by repeated sentence frames
4) parents use more pauses between phrases
5) parents use higher pitch and exaggerated stress
6) parents use more interrogatives and imperatives
the case against Bruner’s Input Theory
- not all cultures use child-directed speech, but their children still learn to speak e.g. Tsimaine People
- child-directed speech does not explain how people progress past the ‘impoverished’ language (Chomsky)
Vygotsky’s Input Theory
Vygotsky developed Bruner’s theory
- noted that adults often use linguistic ‘scaffolding’ to help a child make an utterance
- adults will often start a sentence, and encourage the child to finish it when an utterance is incomplete
- the adult acts as the MKO (More Knowledgeable Other) by supporting the child
- the MKO helps the child move within the ‘Zone of Proximal Development’; the area just beyond what they can already do
spotting Vygotksy
- adult caregivers using features of child-directed language
- adults providing ‘scaffolding’
- children enjoying/benefitting from their interaction
- parents reinforcing their child’s effort to speak by responding in an encouraging way
- conversational skills and pragmatic awareness being modelled e.g. an adult respecting turn-taking
spotting Skinner
support: - adults explicitly modelling or teaching language, and children responding
- children imitating/repeating adult’s speech
- children learning or repairing mistakes after corrections from adults
refute: - children using speech they can’t have copied
- children using non-standard language when an adult uses it in a standard way
spotting Chomsky
- things like over and under-extension suggest that children are actively constructing language according to an unconscious model of how language works
- children doing more than simply imitating adult speech
