Language Learning in Early Childhood -

Language Learning
in Early Childhood
Explaining first language
acquisition
Overview

The behaviourist perspective

The innatist perspective
 The

critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)
Interactionist/developmental perspective
The behaviourist perspective
The behaviourist perspective →
Say what I say

1940s and 1950s
Behaviourism: imitating and practising
→ importance to the environment
The behaviourist perspective →
Say what I say

imitation and practice as the primary
processes in language development
 Imitation
 Practise
 Children
imitate selectively
The behaviourist perspective →
Say what I say

Patterns in language

Unfamiliar formulas

Question formation

Order of events
The innatist perspective
The innatist perspective

Noam Chomsky:
 Languages
are innate
 Children are biologically programmed for
language
→They do not have to be taught
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

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
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!
The Critical Period
Hypothesis
The critical period hypothesis
Particular time (critical period) to learn
certain knowledge or skills
 Genetically programmed
 Prove in history:

 Victor
 Genie
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

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

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 Newport’s research with deaf
children

CPH: Elissa Newport’s 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)
CPH: Newport’s 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

Interactionist/developmental
perspective
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
Jean Piaget

development of children’s cognitive
understanding:




object permanence
stability of quantities
logical inferencing
language = symbol system developing in
childhood and expressing children’s
knowledge
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

The importance of interaction

direct access to language

repetitions and paraphrases of adults

feeling of being understood through adults’
response
Connectionism

language learning = learning in general

language acquisition = association of
words and phrases with objects and
situations
Question
What do you think about these different
theories? Do they all work together or is
there only one that is right?
Thank you for your attention!

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