1. LANGUAGE AND COGNITION DEVELOPMENT

2. Cognitive Development

3. What is Cognitive Development?
Cognitive Development Refers to…..
Internal process and the product of the mind  leading to knowledge development
Covers a wide aspects of mental activities:
Memorizing
Categorizing & simbolizing
Problem solving & creativity
Inventions
Dreaming & fantasizing
Reading & Writing
Language acquisition etc

4. Cognitive Development involves:
Changes in thinking (logic)
Language acquisition
The process of how human receive, store and remember information (knowledge) from their environment.
Brainstem (inner core) =Breathing, heartbeat muscle movement, reflex behv
Limbic system (Covers the brainstem) = Motivation, emotions, & long term memory
Cerebellum – control automatic movements & balance
Cerebral cortex (Higher mental process) = Learning, memory, Thinking, Language
Last to develop

5. Regions of the Brain

6. Influences On Language Development Depend On The Brain Development
Maturation of the Brain  Cortical regions (cerebral cortex) associated with language do not fully mature until late preschool years or later
Broca’s area, located in the frontal lobe
controls language production.
Wernicke’s area, located in the temporal lobe
controls language comprehension.

7. Intellectual Development refers to:
How human relate the knowledge they receive and applied it to their everyday lives.
How the information from the environment
Receive
Stored
Re-use
Stressed on individual
Level of understanding & use of knowledge

8. Thus, every changes, including those learned is being:-
Recorded by the brain
Processed which involves mental activities
The thinking & reasoning process of children differs from adolescent and adults.
As age increases, the ability to think and reasons became complex (better)

9. Cognitive Development Theory :
According to Piaget SCHEMA is a…
cognitive structure  built to assist individual to understand their past experiences.
Organized ways of making sense of experience
Child’s schemas change with age  involved the modification of intellectual schemas as the child seeks to understand its world
Action-based (motor patterns) at first
Later move to a mental (thinking) level
Thus, Schemas are…
organized patterns of thought or behavior  assist in making sense of experience

10. How Cognitive Changes Takes Place?
Through the process of:-
ADAPTATION
ORGANIZATION.
A Child cognitive ability rely a lot on:
How a child response to an event that occurs in their environment.
The effect of these event on their development.
Schemas developed by children must be able to handle new information and situations
Schema can be built based on adaptation process
Adaptation is the process of building schemes through direct interaction with the environment.

11. According to Piaget, adaptation can be further divided into two intellectual processes:
Assimilation: Involves interpreting new information in light of an old (existing) schema. E.g: All 4-legged animals are viewed as a “dog”
Accommodation: Process by which old schemas are created or modified to fit new situations. E.g.: A horse is not a “dog”
Equilibrium exist when children are not changing very much and they are in a steady, comfortable cognitive state  Assimilation is used more than accommodation.
Disequilibrium is a state of cognitive discomfort, that occurs during times of rapid change  Accommodation is used more than assimilation

12. How Cognitive Changes Takes Place?
Organization is an internal process of arranging and linking together schemas to form an interconnected cognitive system.
Schemas reach a true state of equilibrium when they become part of a broad network of structures that can be jointly applied to the surrounding world.

13. Sensitive Period for Language Development
Between ages 13 and 20 months, a period of marked vocabulary growth, infants show increasing lateralization and localization of comprehension.
Evidence showed language development coincides with brain naturalization (development)  showed language dev. has unique biological properties.

14. Language Development

15. Language Development Influences on Language Development
Babies learn by listening to what adults say  parents with lower incomes, educational and occupational levels tend to spend less time talking with their children in positive ways
Child-directed speech  speak slowly in a high-pitched voice with exaggerated ups and downs, simple speech, exaggerate vowel sounds, use short words and sentences

16. Language Development
Preparing For Literacy: The Benefits of Reading Aloud
Opportunities for emotional intimacy and parent- child communication
Children who are read to oftenbetter language skills at ages 2½, 4½, and 5 and better reading comprehension at age 7

17. Language Development Theory
Behaviorism
Social Cognitive Theory -Albert Bandura
Nativism/ Linguistics
Language Acquisition Device (LAD) Noam Chomsky
The Interactionist Theory (compromise between the behaviorist and Nativist approaches)
Cognitive Theory - Jean Piaget
The Information Processing Theory
Social Interaction Theory

18. Behaviorism Theory of Language Development
Behaviorists believe language is something that can be observed and measured.
The need to use language is stimulated and language is uttered in response to stimuli.
Social cognitive theory
Emphasize that behavior, environment and cognition as the key factors in language development
Language is learned and is influenced strongly by environmental experiences  through observational learning/modelling
In the classroom, teachers model the type of work they want their children to produce  from this children learn what to do and how to do it.

19. Behaviorism Theory of Language Development
Under behaviorism, children first imitate what adults say.
This mimicry is either positively or negatively reinforced with social conditioning.
If the children speak correctly, they are praised.
If they demand food, they are fed.
Thus they are conditioned to retain their successful utterances and discard the unsuccessful.

20. Nativism/ Language Acquisition Device
According to Chomsky
Humans are biologically pre wired to learn language at a certain time and in a certain way.
Human brain are pre-programmed  every normal person are able to talk and understand language.
All children are born with ‘a language acquisition device (LAD), a biological endowment that enables the child to detect certain language categories, such as phonology, syntax and semantics’
LAD depend on cells in the brain (cerebrum cortex)
Through LAD children can analyzed language that they hear and able to construct a proper grammar.
Supporters of the LAD say that all children will learn some form of language by a certain age despite how much language input they have received.

21. The Interactionist Theory
Cognitive Theory
Piaget proposed that language is made up of symbols and structures  develops as a child’s mental abilities mature. In addition, language is only one of many human mental or cognitive activities. Proving this theory is troublesome, however.
The Information Processing Theory
Take its cue from computers, where bits of information are processed into language  i.e. many connections are necessary to build language, and language results from the development of patterns and the ability to predict.
But this theory has been criticized for not considering the impact of social interactions.
Social Interaction Theory.
Language has structure and environment plays an important role in shaping that structure.
Social Interaction Theory goes beyond verbal utterances, i.e. language also includes the non-verbal actions that exhibit an understanding of meaning.
Such non-verbal social behaviors often have the same effect as words to accomplish the ends that verbal language does. E.g. As many mothers know, a look or tone of voice can extract a reaction that is the same as when language alone is used.

22. The Importance of Language Development :
Through language  children interact
Language development  very much related to cognitive (intellectual) development
Through language  children are able to progress in other developmental domain, such as in social and emotional development.

23. Forms of communication
Writing
Conversation (verbal)
Sign Language
Body/hand gestures
Facial expression

24. Language can be divided into:
Non-verbal (Understanding)
Hand/body gestures
Symbolic understanding
Understand what others said (Baby understand what being said although he’s still not able to talk yet)
Verbal
Sound/Words are being said to convey message/ meaning  involves the coordination of articulation organs (voice box, trachea, tongue, cheek, lips & palate)
Understanding of meaning and sound being said occurs simultaneously

25. Components of Speech/Language Development
Basically children (human) need to learn four component of language:
Phonology
sound system of language
Semantics
the meaning conveyed by words and sentences
Syntax
The set of grammatical rules indicating how words may be combined to make sentences
Pragmatics
The principle that determine how language are used pragmatically - according to situations & modified to fit the context (e.g: we speak in a simpler manner to a child than to an adult)

26. Stages Of Speech Development In Children
Pre-linguistic speech (pre-conversation)
Crying
Cooing & Babbling
Body Gestures
Facial expressions
Linguistic speech (conversation)

27. Pre-linguistic speech (pre-conversation)
Baby’s ability to understand and convey a message, thou’ he/she is not able to talk yet
Crying
Cooing & Babbling
(around 2 mth – babies make vowel-like noises called cooing)
Cooing ”Ooh, aah, goo, a goo”
(about 4 ths  consonants combine with vowels  babies began babbling)
Babbling  “ ma, ba, ga, da ,pa pa pa”
Becoming a communicator (4 mths)
Infant & adult follow each other’s gaze
This will speed up language development
Simple infant game  pat-a- cake/ peekaboo  demonstrate conventional turn taking.
At the end of the first year  infants use preverbal gestures to influence the behavior of others.
Body Gestures
Protodeclarative action
Protoimperative action
Facial expressions  convey message of emotions

28. Early Language development
First word:
Children first words usually refer to important people, objects that move, familiar actions or outcomes of familiar actions.
Emotions also influence early word learning.
Two-word Utterance phase
Young toddlers add words to their vocabularies slowly (1-3 words a month)
But between the age of mth  a spurt of vocabularies occurs10-20 new words a week.
Telegraphic speech occurs  where in the 2 words utterance phase toddlers will leave out smaller and less important words.
Many word combination do not follow adult grammatical rules.

29. Language Development in Middle childhood
Vocabulary, Grammar, and Syntax
As vocabulary grows during the school years, children use increasingly precise verbs to describe an action, i.e. hitting, slapping
Pragmatics: Knowledge about Communication
Practical use of language to communicate including conversational and narrative skills

30. Specific Aspects Of Parent Care Giving Associated With Language Development:
Shared attention during an activity or experience
Responsiveness to a child’s communication attempt that is related to the topic and content
Verbalizing social routines
Providing language models

31. Parent s’ influence on Language Development
Language stimulation techniques does not involves flash cards, videos or any form of training device.
The most effective method to stimulate language is through loving, responsive and consistent interactions with a child and the people who love him.
The most intensive period for speech and language development for humans is during the first 3 years of life, when the brain is developing and maturing.
During this time, parents and caregivers are engaging in a variety of forms of communication with the child, i.e.
They respond when the infant cries;
they provide the sounds and words that become the building blocks for language.
By six months of age, most children will recognize the basic sounds of their native language. By the end of their first year, most children understand and can speak several words.

32. SCL
Discuss the following language development component in children, i.e. :
How does phonology developed in children?
How does Semantic developed in children?
How does Syntax developed in children?
How does Pragmatics developed in children?
Discuss the differences of language development Theories
Behaviorism
Nativism/ Linguistics
The Interactionist Theory