Transcript Lecture8-Unit2-Intake11 - earlychildhoodeducation-gems

Session 8: Language
Development
Manju Nair.
Language Development
Language a very important aspect of our life is used
for:
1. Expressing inner thoughts and emotions.
2. Making sense of complex and abstract thought.
3. Learning to communicate with others.
4. Fulfilling our wants and needs.
5. Establishing rules and maintaining our culture, etc.
Theories of Language
Development
There are three perspectives on how children learn
language. They are:
1. The Behaviorist Perspective:
2. The Nativist Perspective
3. The Interactionist Perspective
Theories of Language
Development
1. B.F. Skinner proposed that language like, behavior is learned
through operant conditioning; by reinforcement and by relying on
imitation.
2.The nativist perspective was proposed by Noam Chomsky.
Language is etched into the structure of the brain.Language
Acquisition Device or LAD, which is a innate system for picking
up language, helps children make novel utterances and ability to
understand meaning of sentences they hear. E.g. deaf children
inventing language and immigrant children inventing Creole
English.
3. The interactionist perspective emphasize the interaction
between predisposition and environmental influence.
Broca’s area
and Wernicke’s
area
Broca’a area, supports
grammatical processing &
Wernicke’s area plays a
role in comprehending
word meaning.
The Pre-Linguistic
Phase
The pre-linguistic phase is the time period before
children say their first meaningful words. Lasts
from 0 to 13 months.
During the phase, infants bring attention to objects
by pointing and touching.
Infants also communicate by crying, cooing, and
babbling.
Cooing and Babbling
Cooing begins at about 2 months.
Gurgling sounds are made at the back of the
throat.
Pleasant vowel like sounds e.g. ‘o-o’ are made,
especially while interacting with caretakers.
Cooing and Babbling
Babbling begins at about 6 months.
Strings of consonant-vowel sound combinations
are produced, such as ba ba ba or ga ga ga.
Babbling helps infants learn the sounds of speech.
Gestures
Use of gestures begins at about 8 to 12 months.
Infants of this age, provided with appropriate input,
use enactive gestures to refer to objects and
activities before they do so with words.
Pointing is an important social aspect of language.
Recognizing Language
Sounds
Infants as early as three days old can distinguish
and pay attention to speech.
Research has shown that from birth to 6 months,
the babbles of infants are universal.
After 6 months they can perceive the differences in
languages.
They then begin to screen out sounds that do not
belong to their own language.
First Words
By the second half of the first year infants begin to
understand word meanings.
They need to understand the meaning of the words
before they can speak them.
First appear between 10 to 15 months.
They express various intentions with their single words.
Infant’s receptive vocabulary exceeds their spoken
vocabulary.
First Words
The common errors infants make when they first
learn words are: under-extension and overextension.
Under-extension: applying words too narrowly. E.g.
bear only for teddy bear.
Over-extension: applying a word to a wider
collection of objects and events. E.g. car for all
vehicles.
Two-Word Utterances
At about 18 to 24 months children make two word
utterances.
They convey meaning with just two words.
They still rely heavily on gestures, tones, and
context.
This is called telegraphic speech.
Typical Age
Language Milestone
1 to 2 months
Cooing begins
6 months
Babbling begins
5 months
Comprehension of first word
6 to 12 months
Change from universal linguist to
language specific listener
8 to 12 months
Start using gestures
13 months
First word
18 months
Vocabulary spurt
18 to 24 months
Use of two word utterences
Hold on! Just a little
more about
Language....
Getting Ready to Talk
Newborns are sensitive to a wide range of sounds. Soon they develop
a preference for their native tongue.
By 6 months they organize speech into phonemes of their own
language.
Phoneme: smallest sound unit that signals a change in meaning.
Categorical speech perception: the tendency to perceive as identical
a range of sounds that belong to the same phonemic class.
By 7 months infants detect word patterns, by 8 months no-words are
distinguished from words and by 10 months words with weak
syllables.
Child Directed Speech
Adult speech to young children consisting of high
pitched short sentences, exaggerated expressions,
clear pronunciation, distinct pauses between
speech segments and repetition of new words etc
are called CDS - child directed speech.
Hey, Look Who’s
Talking?!
First attempts at becoming a communicator start with joint
attention, then protodeclaritives and then protoimperatives.
Joint attention, two people attending to the same thing.
Protodeclarative; holding, pointing to or touching an object
for others to notice.
Protoimperative; reaching out, touching, and making
sounds for others to do something.
Referential style vs.
Expressive style.
•
Referential style: naming objects.
•
Expressive style: words about feelings and social
etiquette.
Quiz
•
By the end of the first year infants use the thumb and the index
finger in a well coordinated grasp called....................[?]
•
Mention one of the benefits of breast milk as a nutritional
option for very young infants.
•
The inner processes and products of the mind that lead to
knowing is otherwise called?.....................
•
Try to explain the Piagetian stage ‘the sensorimotor period’ in
two or three lines.
•
Please explain the concepts over-extension and underextension in young children’s language development.
References
http://psychology.about.com/od/piagetstheory/p/se
nsorimotor.htm
Berk, L.E. (2003). Child Development (5th Ed).
USA: Pearson Education Inc.
http://www.spdaustralia.com.au/the-seven-senses/