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 over- extension. 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 AgeLanguage Milestone 1 to 2 monthsCooing begins 6 monthsBabbling begins 5 monthsComprehension of first word 6 to 12 months Change from universal linguist to language specific listener 8 to 12 monthsStart using gestures 13 monthsFirst word 18 monthsVocabulary spurt 18 to 24 monthsUse of two word utterences

Hold on! Just a little more about Language....

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. Getting Ready to Talk

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.

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. Hey, Look Who’s Talking?!

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 under- extension in young children’s language development.

References nsorimotor.htm Berk, L.E. (2003). Child Development (5th Ed). USA: Pearson Education Inc.