Introduction to Psychology 1/IPSY102/Cognition/Language development

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Given the remarkable complexity of a language, one might expect that mastering a language would be an especially arduous task; indeed, for those of us trying to learn a second language as adults, this might seem to be true. However, young children master language very quickly with relative ease. B. F. Skinner (1957[1]) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement. Noam Chomsky (1965[2]) criticized this behaviourist approach, asserting instead that the mechanisms underlying language acquisition are biologically determined. The use of language develops in the absence of formal instruction and appears to follow a very similar pattern in children from vastly different cultures and backgrounds. It would seem, therefore, that we are born with a biological predisposition to acquire a language (Chomsky, 1965[3]; Fernández & Cairns, 2011[4]). Moreover, it appears that there is a critical period for language acquisition, such that this proficiency at acquiring language is maximal early in life; generally, as people age, the ease with which they acquire and master new languages diminishes (Johnson & Newport, 1989[5]; Lenneberg, 1967[6]; Singleton, 1995[7]).

Children begin to learn about language from a very early age. In fact, it appears that this is occurring even before we are born. Newborns show preference for their mother’s voice and appear to be able to discriminate between the language spoken by their mother and other languages. Babies are also attuned to the languages being used around them and show preferences for videos of faces that are moving in synchrony with the audio of spoken language versus videos that do not synchronize with the audio (Blossom & Morgan, 2006[8]; Pickens, 1994[9]; Spelke & Cortelyou, 1981[10]).

Stages of Language and Communication Development Stage Age Developmental Language and Communication 1 0–3 months Reflexive communication 2 3–8 months Reflexive communication; interest in others 3 8–13 months Intentional communication; sociability 4 12–18 months First words 5 18–24 months Simple sentences of two words 6 2–3 years Sentences of three or more words 7 3–5 years Complex sentences; has conversations

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Born to Talk

Watch this video on Youtube, in which psychologist Steven Pinker and actor Alan Alda discuss (and demonstrate) children's instinct for language.

Born to talk



Dig deeper: The case of Genie

In the fall of 1970, a social worker in the Los Angeles area found a 13-year-old girl who was being raised in extremely neglectful and abusive conditions. The girl, who came to be known as Genie, had lived most of her life tied to a potty chair or confined to a crib in a small room that was kept closed with the curtains drawn. For a little over a decade, Genie had virtually no social interaction and no access to the outside world. As a result of these conditions, Genie was unable to stand up, chew solid food, or speak (Fromkin, Krashen, Curtiss, Rigler, & Rigler, 1974[11]; Rymer, 1993[12]). The police took Genie into protective custody.

Genie’s abilities improved dramatically following her removal from her abusive environment, and early on, it appeared she was acquiring language—much later than would be predicted by critical period hypotheses that had been posited at the time (Fromkin et al., 1974[13]). Genie managed to amass an impressive vocabulary in a relatively short amount of time. However, she never developed a mastery of the grammatical aspects of language (Curtiss, 1981[14]). Perhaps being deprived of the opportunity to learn language during a critical period impeded Genie’s ability to fully acquire and use language. You may recall that each language has its own set of phonemes that are used to generate morphemes, words, and so on. Babies can discriminate among the sounds that make up a language (for example, they can tell the difference between the “s” in vision and the “ss” in fission); early on, they can differentiate between the sounds of all human languages, even those that do not occur in the languages that are used in their environments. However, by the time that they are about 1 year old, they can only discriminate among those phonemes that are used in the language or languages in their environments (Jensen, 2011[15]; Werker & Lalonde, 1988[16]; Werker & Tees, 1984[17]).

Visit this website to learn more about how babies lose the ability to discriminate among all possible human phonemes as they age.

After the first few months of life, babies enter what is known as the babbling stage, during which time they tend to produce single syllables that are repeated over and over. As time passes, more variations appear in the syllables that they produce. During this time, it is unlikely that the babies are trying to communicate; they are just as likely to babble when they are alone as when they are with their caregivers (Fernández & Cairns, 2011[18]). Interestingly, babies who are raised in environments in which sign language is used will also begin to show babbling in the gestures of their hands during this stage (Petitto, Holowka, Sergio, Levy, & Ostry, 2004[19]).

Generally, a child’s first word is uttered sometime between the ages of 1 year to 18 months, and for the next few months, the child will remain in the “one word” stage of language development. During this time, children know a number of words, but they only produce one-word utterances. The child’s early vocabulary is limited to familiar objects or events, often nouns. Although children in this stage only make one-word utterances, these words often carry larger meaning (Fernández & Cairns, 2011[20]). So, for example, a child saying “cookie” could be identifying a cookie or asking for a cookie.

As a child’s lexicon grows, she begins to utter simple sentences and to acquire new vocabulary at a very rapid pace. In addition, children begin to demonstrate a clear understanding of the specific rules that apply to their language(s). Even the mistakes that children sometimes make provide evidence of just how much they understand about those rules. This is sometimes seen in the form of overgeneralization. In this context, overgeneralization refers to an extension of a language rule to an exception to the rule. For example, in English, it is usually the case that an “s” is added to the end of a word to indicate plurality. For example, we speak of one dog versus two dogs. Young children will overgeneralize this rule to cases that are exceptions to the “add an s to the end of the word” rule and say things like “those two gooses” or “three mouses.” Clearly, the rules of the language are understood, even if the exceptions to the rules are still being learned (Moskowitz, 1978[21]).

References

  1. ↑ Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. Acton, MA: Copley Publishing Group.
  2. ↑ Chomsky, N.(1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
  3. ↑ Chomsky, N.(1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
  4. ↑ Fernández, E. M., & Cairns, H. S. (2011). Fundamentals of psycholinguistics. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
  5. ↑ Johnson, J. S., & Newport, E. L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology, 21, 60–99.
  6. ↑ Lenneberg, E. (1967). Biological foundations of language. New York: Wiley.
  7. ↑ Singleton, D. M. (1995). Introduction: A critical look at the critical period hypothesis in second language acquisition research. In D.M. Singleton & Z. Lengyel (Eds.), The age factor in second language acquisition: A critical look at the critical period hypothesis in second language acquisition research (pp. 1–29). Avon, UK: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
  8. ↑ Blossom, M., & Morgan, J. L. (2006). Does the face say what the mouth says? A study of infants’ sensitivity to visual prosody. In the 30th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Somerville, MA.
  9. ↑ Pickens, J. (1994). Full-term and preterm infants’ perception of face-voice synchrony. Infant Behavior and Development, 17, 447–455.
  10. ↑ Spelke, E. S., & Cortelyou, A. (1981). Perceptual aspects of social knowing: Looking and listening in infancy. In M.E. Lamb & L.R. Sherrod (Eds.), Infant social cognition: Empirical and theoretical considerations (pp. 61–83). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
  11. ↑ Fromkin, V., Krashen, S., Curtiss, S., Rigler, D., & Rigler, M. (1974). The development of language in Genie: A case of language acquisition beyond the critical period. Brain and Language, 1, 81–107.
  12. ↑ Rymer, R. (1993). Genie: A Scientific Tragedy. New York: Harper Collins.
  13. ↑ Fromkin, V., Krashen, S., Curtiss, S., Rigler, D., & Rigler, M. (1974). The development of language in Genie: A case of language acquisition beyond the critical period. Brain and Language, 1, 81–107.
  14. ↑ Curtiss, S. (1981). Dissociations between language and cognition: Cases and implications. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 11(1), 15–30.
  15. ↑ Jensen, J. (2011). Phoneme acquisition: Infants and second language learners. The Language Teacher, 35(6), 24–28.
  16. ↑ Werker, J. F., & Lalonde, C. E. (1988). Cross-language speech perception: Initial capabilities and developmental change. Developmental Psychology, 24, 672–683.
  17. ↑ Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development, 7, 49–63.
  18. ↑ Fernández, E. M., & Cairns, H. S. (2011). Fundamentals of psycholinguistics. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
  19. ↑ Petitto, L. A., Holowka, S., Sergio, L. E., Levy, B., & Ostry, D. J. (2004). Baby hands that move to the rhythm of language: Hearing babies acquiring sign languages babble silently on the hands. Cognition, 93, 43–73.
  20. ↑ Fernández, E. M., & Cairns, H. S. (2011). Fundamentals of psycholinguistics. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
  21. ↑ Moskowitz, B. A. (1978). The acquisition of language. Scientific American, 239, 92–108. Petitto, L. A., Holowka, S., Sergio, L. E., Levy, B., & Ostry, D. J. (2004). Baby hands that move to the rhythm of language: Hearing babies acquiring sign languages babble silently on the hands. Cognition, 93, 43–73.

Source
This page was proudly adapted from Psychology published by OpenStax CNX. Oct 31, 2016 under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.52.
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