Language Development in Infancy

12 Key excerpts on "Language Development in Infancy"

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  Handbook of Psycholinguistics

  • Matthew Traxler, Morton Ann Gernsbacher(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  SECTION 3 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT This page intentionally left blank Chapter 27 Language Learning in Infancy Anne Fernald and Virginia A. Marchman 1. INTRODUCTION Learning language is one of the most impressive and intriguing human accomplish-ments. Think about the vast differences between the healthy 12-month-old child who says “ Ah! Ah! ” with hands held up in the air, eager to be lifted from the highchair, and the same child six months later using recognizable two-word combinations coordinated with gestures (e.g., “ Mommy out! ”). Within the next year that child will start using an impressive complement of morphosyntactic skills to produce utterances that reflect con-siderable linguistic sophistication (e.g., “ Mom! I wanna get outta this chair now! ”). The child’s desire may be equally intense in each of these situations, yet clearly the typical 2-year-old has advanced significantly beyond the 1-year-old in her ability to effectively use her native language to make that particular desire known to those around her. The goal of developmental psycholinguistics is to map the endogenous and exogenous forces that converge to shape and guide this set of developmental achievements. Over the past five decades, the field of language development research has been at the center of the debate between nativist and constructivist approaches to understanding human cognition. In the early 1960s, Chomsky’s proposal that language acquisition was innately guided by a Language Acquisition Device offered a powerful solution to the logical problem of how children learn language, a view still ardently embraced by many in the field. Since that time, however, an alternative view has been gaining momentum, gathering logical and empirical support for the idea that a child’s linguistic knowledge is constructed rather than triggered, emerging as a consequence of the child’s experi-ences with the linguistic and non-linguistic world (e.g., Bates & MacWhinney, 1979; Braine, 1976; Slobin, 1973).

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  Understanding Child Development

  Psychological Perspectives and Applications

  • Sara Meadows(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 6 Language Development

  ■ Infants’ Perception of Speech Sounds

  ■ Infants’ Production of Speech Sounds

  ■ Beginning to Use Words

  ■ Words and Their Functions: Using Words as Names

  ■ Constraints on Learning New Words

  ■ The Growth of Vocabulary

  ■ From Single Words to Sentences

  ■ Language Acquisition Devices

  ■ Language Acquisition Principles

  ■ Language Acquisition Support Systems

  ■ Children’s Metalinguistic Behaviour

  ■ Children with Specific Language Impairment

  ■ Biological Bases of Language Development

  Language development has been one of the most enthusiastically discussed areas of child development. There have been proposals that it is genetically programmed in ways built up by evolution and wired into the brain, and proposals that it is all down to exposure to others’ language. And because we all think language is enormously important and want the best sort of development, there has been a lot of debate and a lot of posturing in defence of quite extreme positions. The truer picture is more complicated, more developmental and more embedded. The development of language provides a good example of epigenesis, and its later stages also involve consideration of eco-systems.

  Human infants clearly start with a great many capacities and pieces of behaviour suited to language, but they are also born into communities which use language and expect the infant to use it too. On the whole, all except the severely impaired develop language in similar ways, though at varying rates: but the details of the language and how it is used are heavily influenced by the child’s experience. Through development, language functions as a means of communication, as a means of reflecting on and re-organising experience, and as a way to receive and transform the accumulated knowledge and values of the community. Using language is thus a central part of human existence. (For reviews, see Clark 2016; MacWhinney 2015; Meadows 2006.)

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  Language Development and Education

  Children With Varying Language Experiences

  • P. Menyuk, M. Brisk(Authors)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  1 Language Development in Infancy: Ages 0–3 1.1 Introduction Language development during these very early years of life, from birth to about 2 1 ⁄2 to 3 years, is very dramatic and rapid. From birth to 2 1 ⁄2 years is the period usually labeled as infancy, in keeping with Piaget’s description of these years (Piaget, 1926). The period starts with the baby, who spends much of the time sleeping, crying and cooing, and ends with the almost-3-year-old child who can engage in con- versation with family members, peers and teachers in one or more languages. The home environment is of principal importance during these years since much of the infant’s time is spent in that situation. However, over the past few decades care-giving and educational pro- grams for infants have been developing in the U.S., as well as being available in some other countries for some time. Even though some aspects of language development are still very much the product of the familial situation in which a child is born, these programs can impact development as well, and can do so in a positive manner. The social and economic situation of the family, and the culture and particular language(s) or dialect(s) in the environment seems to affect most markedly two aspects of language development for both mono- lingual and bilingual learners. These are vocabulary, or what has been termed lexical development, and also the use of language or what has been termed the pragmatics of the language. For bilingual children prag- matic knowledge includes choice of the appropriate language in the appropriate situations. There are also universal aspects of development regardless of environment. These universals of development also take place in two aspects of development. The first is in the acquisition of structural knowledge (how to combine words in utterances) or what we 1

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  Development in Infancy

  • Martha E. Arterberry, Marc H. Bornstein(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 9 Language Development in Infancy

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003340263-9

  The words “infant”and“baby” both have their origins in language-related concepts. The word “infant” derives from the Latin in + fans, translated literally as “nonspeaker,” and the word “baby” shares a Middle English root with “babble.” In the estimation of many athorities, children only leave infancy when they begin to speak. As we learn in this chapter, however, “conversations” with babies begin well before words come into consideration.

  In this chapter, we describe how infants develop from nonverbal individualists into interactive conversationalists, ready and able to articulate their cares, needs, and desires to others. We start by defining four broad domains of language and considering norms and individual variation, along with some important principles of early language acquisition. We then discuss the social supports, such as parents’ special speech to infants and activities that teach turn taking and facilitate infants’ language development and their learning the social uses of language. Next, we take up production and comprehension in four formal domains of language: producing and perceiving sounds (phonology), vocabulary (semantics), grammar (syntax), and pragmatics (the unwritten conventions of social communication). Language is all the more remarkable in infants who are learning two or more languages, a topic broached at the end of the chapter. As we see, infants are surprisingly prepared in most of these realms, possessing the motivations and the competencies to ensure that they quickly become full participants in language. (Strangely, as we see, speech production takes time to develop.) The acquisition of language reflects the dynamic interaction between the child’s developing competencies and the larger context of adult–infant social communication.

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  Childhood and Adolescence

  Voyages in Development

  • Spencer Rathus(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 6 INFANCY: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 207 psycholinguistic theory The view that language learning involves an interaction between environmental influences and an inborn tendency to acquire language. The emphasis is on the inborn tendency. Infants as young as 5 months old prefer “baby talk,” or infant-directed speech, over adult talk (Schachner & Hannon, 2011). The short, simple sentences and high pitch are more likely to produce a response from the child and to enhance vocabulary development than are complex sentences and those spoken in a lower pitch. Children who hear their utterances repeated and recast do seem to learn from the adults who are modeling the new expressions (Trevarthen, 2003). Repetition of children’s vocalizations also appears to be one method of reinforcing vocalizing. Do Infants Have an Inborn “Language Acquisition Device”? According to Noam Chomsky’s psycholinguistic theory, humans have an inborn language acquisition device that leads to commonalities in language development in all cultures. Babbling, for example, emerges at about the same time everywhere, and at about the same time, infants begin to sound as if they are babbling the sounds that occur in the language spoken in the home. Chomsky also hypothesizes that all languages have a universal grammar, regardless of how dif-ferent they might seem. Pixland/Masterfile How Can Adults Enhance Language Development in Children? Studies show that language growth in young children is enhanced when mothers and other adults do the following things (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2014a): • Use a simplified form of speech known as “infant-directed speech.” • Use questions that engage the child in conversation. • Respond to the child’s expressive language efforts in a way that is “attuned.” For example, they relate their speech to the child’s utterance by saying, “Yes, your doll is pretty” in response to the child’s statement “My doll.” • Join the child in paying attention to a particular activity or toy.

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  Child Psychology

  A Canadian Perspective

  • Alastair Younger, Scott A. Adler, Ross Vasta(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  (PhotoDisc, Inc.) (continued ) 437 Conclusion CONCLUSION Developmental psychologists, like researchers in the other natural sciences, attempt to identify processes that are general and fundamental. Rather than considering each event or behaviour unique, scientists search for principles and laws that can explain and interrelate them across the many domains of human development. During the 1960s, the study of language became an exception to this approach. Language was believed to be different, requiring special mechanisms and processes independent of other behaviours. The basic cognitive and learning processes that psychologists used to explain other aspects of development were thought to be inadequate, and even irrelevant, in explaining language acquisition. Perhaps this separation occurred because the nativist model was developed outside traditional psychology by theorists who were trained primarily in linguistic structure, rather than in human behaviour. As we have seen throughout this chapter, however, the situation has changed considerably. With the development of new theoretical models and better research techniques, language study has come back into the mainstream of child psychology. The view that language is either Describe the means by which children learn the pragmatics of language use. 1. What is involved in the knowledge of pragmatics? 2. How do children use speech acts to communicate? 3. What strategies do children learn to apply in discourse? 4. What skills do children need for social referential communication? LEARNING OBJECTIVE 11.5 deficits. A disorder labelled Specific Language Impairment pro- vides an example in the first category. Children with Specific Language Impairment have normal intelligence by most measures, but are seriously delayed in the mastery of language (Fletcher, 1999). Williams syndrome has been cited by nativist theorists as evidence for the second sort of dissociation (Pinker, 1999).

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  Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language

  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hugh J. Silverman(Authors)
  • 1979(Publication Date)
  • Northwestern University Press

    (Publisher)

  1 / The Psychological Development of Language in the 'Child [1] AN OVERVIEW DURING THE FIRST MONTHS OF LIFE, the child cries; he makes expressive movements; and then he begins to babble. One must consider this babbling as the ancestor of language: it is, above all, extraordinarily rich and includes phonemes which do not exist in the language that is spoken around the child, and which he himself, once he has become an adult, is incapable of reproducing (for example, when he wants to reacquire t'hem to learn a foreign language). This babbling is therefore a poly- morphic language, whieh is spontaneous with respect to its en- vironment. (It exists in deaf-mute children, even though it is not as well developed.) There is, however, a large amount of imita- tion. This imitation reaches its culmination between six and twelve months, but it remains rudimentary to the extent that the child does not grasp' the meaning of that which he is imitating. The same relationship' exists between babbling and language as between scribblin,g and drawing. This imitation concerns the melody of the sentence just as much as the words, because the child tries, as it were, to speak "in general." W. Stem relates that, for a month, his daughter spoke a foreign ''language,'' which had 'a conversational tone but which did not mean anything. 1 (It was as though she were playing I. [See William Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood (New York: Holt, 1931).] [II] 12 / CONSCIOUSNESS AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION at speaking.) According to Delacroix, "The child bathes in language." 2 He is attracted and enthralled by the movement of dialogue around him, and tries it himself. Language is the indissoluble extension of all physical activity, and at the same time it is quite new in relation to that physical actiVity. Speech emerges from the "total language" as constituted by gestures, mimicries, etc.

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  HDEV

  • Spencer Rathus(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  101 CHAPTER 5: Infancy: Cognitive Development transforming ideas into sentences. From Chomsky’s perspective, children are genetically prewired to attend to language and deduce the rules for constructing sen-tences from ideas. That is, it appears that children are prewired to listen to language in such a way that they come to understand rules of grammar. BRAIN STRUCTURES INVOLVED IN LANGUAGE Many parts of the brain are involved in language devel-opment; however, some of the key biological structures that may provide the basis for the functions of the LAD are based in the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex for nearly all right-handed people and for two out of three left-handed people (Hoff, 2014; Nenert et al., 2017). In the left hemisphere, the two areas most involved in speech are Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area (see Figure 5.6). Damage to either area is likely to cause an aphasia —a disruption in the ability to understand or produce language. Broca’s area is located near the section of the motor cortex that controls the muscles of the tongue and throat and other areas of the face that are used in speech. When Broca’s area is damaged, people speak laboriously in a pattern termed Broca’s aphasia . But they can readily understand speech. PSYCHOLINGUISTIC THEORY According to psycho-linguistic theory , language acquisition involves an interaction between environmental influences—such as exposure to parental speech and reinforcement—and an inborn tendency to acquire language. Noam Chomsky (1988, 1990) labeled this innate tendency a language acquisition device (LAD) . Evidence for an inborn ten-dency is found in the universality of human language abil-ities; in the regularity of the early production of sounds, even among deaf children; and in the invariant sequences of language development among all languages (Pinker, 2007). The inborn tendency primes the nervous system to learn grammar. On the surface, languages differ much in vocabulary and grammar.

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  Handbook of Developmental Psychology

  • Jaan Valsiner, Kevin J Connolly, Jaan Valsiner, Kevin J Connolly(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  10 The Role of Language in Human Development N A N C Y B U D W I G Over the last few decades developmental psychol-ogists have made increasing use of the study of language in their attempts to understand develop-ment. One finds two major ways language has been viewed in such endeavors: a view of 'language as method' and an alternative view of 'language as mechanism' (see Budwig, 1999; 2000a; 2000b). The first view of language, quite popular in psychological theorizing, presupposes a representational view of meaning (see Budwig, Wertsch, & Uzgiris, 2000; Reddy, 1993, for review). According to this view language provides a useful method for the researcher; language can be thought of as a powerful tool that assists in better understanding underlying conceptual or social developments. Here the view is offered that the study of language affords the researcher access to otherwise hard to examine notions. This view of language as method has been used extensively by many developmental psychologists, including researchers interested in theory of mind questions (see Bartsch & Wellman, 1995; Dunn, Bretherton, & Munn, 1987; Wellman, 1990), as well as in the study of self (Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979). While this is a dominant view of language, others exist and have begun to gain significance in develop-mental theorizing and research. One alternative view considers language in terms of a functional perspec-tive highlighting the role of language as a mechanism that children draw upon in their construction of meaning (see Bruner, 1990; Budwig, 1999; 2000b; Nelson, 1996; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986; Wertsch, 1991, among others). Here emphasis is placed on the idea that language provides children with a powerful tool to apprehend, represent, and transform their worlds. Note though that the issue is not simply one of providing a tool for the researcher or a tool for the child.

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  Blackwell Handbook of Language Development

  • Erika Hoff, Marilyn Shatz, Erika Hoff, Marilyn Shatz(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Cross language analysis of phonetic units in language addressed to infants. Science , 277 , 684–686. Kuhl, P. K., Coffey-Corina, S., Padden, D., & Dawson, G. (2005). Links between social and linguistic processing of speech in preschool children with autism: Behavioral and electrophysi-ological evidence. Developmental Science , 8 , F1–F12. Kuhl, P. K., Tsao, F.-M., & Liu, H.-M. (2003). Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 100 , 9096–9101. Landau, B., & Gleitman, L. R. (1985). Language and experience: Evidence from the blind child. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar: Vol. 1. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Lidz, J., & Waxman, S. (2004). Reaffirming the poverty of the stimulus argument: a reply to the replies. Cognition , 93 , 157–165. Lidz, J., Waxman, S., & Freedman, J. (2003). What infants know about syntax but couldn’t have learned: Evidence for syntactic structure at 18 months. Cognition , 89 , B65–B73. Liu, H.-M., Kuhl, P. K., & Tsao, F.-M. (2003). An association between mothers’ speech clarity and infants’ speech discrimination skills. Developmental Science , 6 , F1–F10. Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics: Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marcus, G. F. (1993). Negative evidence in language acquisition. Cognition , 46 , 53–85. Markman, E. M. (1989). The development of categories and category names: Problems of induction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Moore, C., Angelopoulos, M., & Bennett, P. (1999). Word learning in the context of referential and salience cues. Developmental Psychology , 35 , 60–68. Moses, L. J., & Flavell, J. H. (1990). Inferring false beliefs from actions and reactions. Child Development , 61 , 929–945. Mundy, P., Sigman, M., Ungerer, J., & Sherman, T. (1986). Defining the social deficits of autism: The contribution of nonverbal communication measures.

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  Early Childhood Studies

  Principles and Practice

  • Jane Johnston, Lindy Nahmad-Williams, Ruby Oates, Val Wood(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Without oracy there would be no literacy. Being proficient in our first language is therefore paramount to our success as a social being within a literate society. The study of linguistics is highly complex, but one part of this science is how we acquire our first language. There are a number of theories to consider. Perhaps the two most talked about are the opposing nature versus nurture views, or, as they are more commonly known within language development: nativist and empiricist. The two theorists most associated with these two differing views on language acquisition, brought to the fore in the 1950s and 1960s, are Noam Chomsky and B.F. Skinner. B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) Skinner’s behaviourist theory has already been discussed in Chapter 1, and it is this theory which he applied to language acquisition. This nurture/empiricist view of development focuses on language as a learned behaviour by emphasising the child’s imitation of the language of others and the role of adult reinforcement. Skinner viewed a baby’s babbling as the beginnings of speech and noted that the positive response of adults to this bab- bling promotes further attempts to use verbal language. As the babbling is reinforced, it gradually becomes recognisable words. Mukherji and O’Dea (2000) cite the many natu- ral behaviours adults exhibit with babies and toddlers, such as responding positively to attempts at communication; being proactive, such as waving and repeating ‘bye bye’ or ‘ta ta’; and naming objects and events. These certainly would reinforce language and encour- age repetition. ‘Motherese’ is a term used to describe the unique voice adults use when talking to babies, which is used all over the world, but not in all cultures. It is generally slower, with shorter sentences, and higher-pitched and more exaggerated in intonation than the speech of adult- to-adult.

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  Child Psychology

  Development in a Changing Society

  • Robin Harwood, Scott A. Miller, Ross Vasta(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Learning Language in Diverse Family Contexts A major aspect of the child’s immediate environment is the child’s parents and other primary caretakers. Adults differ in how well and how often they speak to children. As mentioned previously, however, complexity and variety in language experiences contribute to children’s language development. The more words children hear spoken Links to Related Material In Chapter 8, you read about children’s developing theory of mind. Here, you learn more about how children’s ability to understand another’s state of mind influences how they use language with others. Learning Objective 10.7 Discuss influences of family, technology, language, and culture on literacy and learning. To become effective communica- tors, young children must acquire both speaker skills and listener skills. What rules of discourse are these children likely observing? How can we know whether their social referential communication is effective? What kinds of cues can they use to improve their comprehension? (Jennie Woodcock/Reflections/Corbis Images) Contexts That Influence Language Development 403 and explained, for example, the more words they integrate into their vocabulary (Weizman & Snow, 2001). Language experiences are dynamic rather than one way. That is, characteristics of children affect how adults communicate with them. For ex- ample, children who are more sociable are spoken to more often than shy children (Patterson & Fisher, 2000). One factor that predicts the quality of a child’s language environment is socioeco- nomic status, or SES. In general, children from low-income families experience signifi- cantly less oral and print language stimulation in their homes (Payne, Whitehurst, & Angell, 1994; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998) and in their neighborhoods (Purcell-Gates, 1996).

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