Language Exam 3 - Language Development Theories

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What is a language development theory

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A theory of language development provides information …how and why children develop language

Theories provide testable information relating to language development

• There is NO definitive theory that covers all types of language

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Nurture inspired theories/empiricist theories

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Everything is learned

Humans gain knowledge through experience

Infant is a blank slate

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Nature inspired theories/nativist theories

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Knowledge is innate and not learned

A great deal of knowledge is innnate and genetically transferred rather than learned thru experiences

Infant is born with language system

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Nature Inspired Theories

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Behaviorist Theory

Social-Interactionist Theory

Cognitive Theory

Competition Model

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Nature Inspired Theories

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Universal grammar

Syntactic bootstrapping

Semantic bootstrapping

Connectionist Theories

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Behaviorist theory (Skinner): Main ideas

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Nurture

Behaviorists search for observable conditions (stimuli) that co-occur and predict verbal behaviors (responses).

Behaviorists avoid explanations of language that involve knowledge of grammatical rules.

Emphasizes performance over competence

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Behaviorist theory (Skinner): Skinner (1957) defined language as a verbal behavior

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learned like any other behavior. (speakers are bystanders with no active role in language development)

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Behaviorist theory (Skinner): Operant conditioning: Reinforcement

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increases probability of a behavior

Skinner says we only reinforce babels and sounds relative to our own language (learning

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Behaviorist theory (Skinner): Operant conditioning: Punishement

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decreases probability of a behavior

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Behaviorist theory (Skinner): Productive/expressive language

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Assumes that parents model, children imitate, and parents selectively reinforce, and grammar is learned by chaining. (problem with this theory is that children create utterences that adults would never say, such as "yesterday I runned to the store")
• Say “bye-bye”, say “dog”

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Behaviorist theory (Skinner): Contributions

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Highlights role of environmental context in which these processes occur.

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Behaviorist theory (Skinner): Limitations

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• Parents of young language learning children directly reinforce only a small percentage of their children’s utterances.
○ There a dog.
• Imitation does not account for syntactic learning
○ Adult-to-adult speech provides poor model
○ I eated.

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Social-interactionist theory (Vygotsky): Main definitions

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Language emerges through social interaction with peers and adults

• A child’s language and cognitive skills are connected processes in the beginning. At age two, these processes develop as separate (although still connected) abilities.

• A child’s language skills (consider all human knowledge) are first introduced in the context of social interaction (social plane) and then concepts are internalized to the psychological plane.

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Social-interactionist theory (Vygotsky): Zone of proximal development

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As children learn language thru social interactions, their general cognitive abilities are also being furthered.

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Social-interactionist theory (Vygotsky): Limitations

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Focused on social interaction not on forms of language

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Social-interactionist theory (Vygotsky): Contributions

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Centered on communication unit – the form of whole communication piece

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Cognitive theory (Piaget): Main definitions

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The developmental stages

Cognitive development precedes language development.

Children progress thru a series of cognitive stages.

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Cognitive theory (Piaget): Ego-Centric

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• Speech and language are ego-centric in the beginning. Children produce linguistic forms which they have prior knowledge.

• Children will produce ego-centric speech even during conversation. Imagine two children having two different conversations while speaking with each other.

When a child can appreciate another’s perspective, ego-centric speech is replaced with true dialogue

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Cognitive theory (Piaget): Limitations

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• The link between cognitive abilities and language is not adequately explained.
• Not much on early communication

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Cognitive theory (Piaget): Contributions

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• Cognitive development framework
• Highlights child development

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Competition model (MacWhinney): Main Definitions

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Repeated exposures to reliable language input strengthens children’s correct representations of morphology, phonology, syntax, and lexical forms of their language

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Competition model (MacWhinney): Acquiring language forms

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• Children acquire language forms that they frequently and reliably early in life.

• Children acquire language forms they hear rarely or inconsistently later in life.

• Children also acquire forms that they don’t hear often or never hear, but the adult form wins out due to us correcting them.

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Universal grammar (Chomsky): Definitions

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the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements or properties of all human language

This theory contrasts with behavioral theory

Children are born with general grammatical rules (LAD: Language Acquisition Device) that are common to all languages.

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Universal grammar (Chomsky): How children refine language

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• Infants are born with basic set of grammatical rules and the input they receive sets options to match those of their native language. Children are born linguistically competent.

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Universal grammar (Chomsky):
Deep structure

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• Deep structure contains the meaning of the sentence formed in your brain (phrase structure rules)

• The dog chases the cat. NP + VP

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Universal grammar (Chomsky):
Surface structure

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• Surface structure is the actual sentence we speak.

• The cat is chased by the dog.

NP2 + be + V + ed + by + NP1

• What is the dog chasing?

NP2 (what) + be + NP1 + V + ing

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Universal grammar (Chomsky): Limitations

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• Doesn’t really describe single word or two word levels of language development
• Doesn’t emphasize environment, social or cognitive growth
• Is it too simple of an explanation?

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Universal grammar (Chomsky): Contributions

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• Chomsky redefined linguistic bx in psychological terms
• Concerned with linguistic processing

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Bootstrapping

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you accomplish a goal on your own with little outside assistance

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Syntactic bootstrapping (Gleitman): Definitions

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• Children use their knowledge of syntactic categories to make inferences about the meanings of new words. Use syntactic frames around unknown verbs to interpret their meanings.

• Children come to language learning with an understanding of syntactic categories and use the knowledge to interpret word meanings that fill various positions in sentences.

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Syntactic bootstrapping (Gleitman): Extralinguistic cues

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• “Are you bringing me the remote control”

How does child figure out what bring means

• Extralinguistic cues could suggest meanings such as hold, carry, walk or bring. Child knows what remote control is, and knows that you want the child to do something to you with the remote, they can figure out that you want the remote "brought" to you.

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Semantic bootstrapping (Pinker): Definitions

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• Children use their knowledge of word meanings to make inferences about the syntactic categories to which the words belong.

• Children figure out grammatical structures by using word meanings they acquire from observing events around them.

• As their lexicon grow from their observations of objects and events, they use the relationship between semantics and syntax to determine the syntactic category to which words belong.

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Connectionist theories (Rumelhart & McClelland): Definitions

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• Focus on modeling how language is organized across the brain and on describing how connections are formed among words within the lexicons

Language is organized in a network containing nodes and connections. C

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What do infants bring to language learning task?: Social-interactionist theory

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general social structure

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What do infants bring to language learning task?: Cognitive theory

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general cognitive structure

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What do infants bring to language learning task?: Competition model

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ability to organize and attend to linguistic data

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What do infants bring to language learning task?: Universal grammar

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domain-specific linguistic knowledge

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What do infants bring to language learning task?: Syntactic bootstrapping

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syntactic categories

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What do infants bring to language learning task?: Semantic bootstrapping

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semantic categories, ability to parse sentences and link words in sentences to semantic categories

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What do infants bring to language learning task?: Connectionist theories

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ability to attend to an organize linguistic data

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What mechanisms drive language acquisition?: Behaviorist theory

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operant conditioning by parents, caregivers – a domain general process

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What mechanisms drive language acquisition?: Social-interactionist theory

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social interactions with others – a domain general process

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What mechanisms drive language acquisition?: Cognitive theory

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general cognitive processing abilities – a domain general process

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What mechanisms drive language acquisition?: Competition mode

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induction and hypothesis testing – domain general processes

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What mechanisms drive language acquisition?: Universal grammar

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discovery of the parameters that a person’s language encompasses - domain-specific processes

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What mechanisms drive language acquisition?: Syntactic bootstrapping

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syntactic categories

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What mechanisms drive language acquisition?: Semantic bootstrapping

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to understand how language works – domain-general process, to make hypotheses about new words – domain-specific processes

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What mechanisms drive language acquisition?: Connectionist theories

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pattern detection – domain-general process

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What types of input support language system?: Behaviorist theory

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reinforcement of desirable verbal bxs and punishment of undesirable verbal bxs.

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What types of input support language system?: Social-interactionist theory

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linguistic input that is within the child’s zpd

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What types of input support language system?: Cognitive theory

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understanding events, relations, and phenomena in a nonlinguistic sense

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What types of input support language system?: Competition model

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reliable and frequent input patterns

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What types of input support language system?: Universal grammar

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general linguistic input

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What types of input support language system?: Syntactic bootstrapping

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syntactic input

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What types of input support language system?: Semantic bootstrapping

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semantic input

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What types of input support language system?: Connectionist theories

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reliable and frequent input patterns

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•Language development theories influence the practice of speech language pathology in what areas?

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English as a second language, prevention of language difficulties, and intervention.